EVA Sessions: The Human Cage
by Gob Hobblin
Summary: A boy wakes up on a mysterious island where people are numbers and children are tools built for sinister purpose. As he clashes with the intentions being set before him, he must fight to keep his identity while pursuing rumors of a rebel who calls himself the 'Free Man'...
1. Numeral Sinister

The boy awoke to an unfamiliar ceiling.

He was used to the sensation, having woken up under many different ceilings at many different times in his life. The one unifying theme they all had was that none of them were his. He was, simply, a guest, a traveling difficulty. No one wanted him, no one wanted to deal with him.

It took him a moment to realize, however, that the ceiling above him was not the one he had gone to sleep under. He sat upright, and panicked, glancing around him. This was not the room, either. _That_ room was in the house of his uncle, a simple guest room with no furnishings beyond a bed and table with a chair. _This_ was an apartment, with significantly more furnishings. They were not extravagant, but they were nice. Floor lamps, a chest of drawers, fresh flowers in a pot.

He fumbled out of the bed, and found he was wearing nice, silk pajamas. He screamed, and fell down, crawling to a corner of the room. He felt the heat prickle on his back of rising sweat, and his heart raced. The bizarre change in setting had left him disoriented, and frightened. Had he been kidnapped? It was the first thing that occurred to him, but made no senes. Why the nice room and the pajamas?

Being kidnapped was the only thing that made sense, though. Why, then? It could be because of his father; he didn't know precisely what the man did, but it seemed important. Still, his father barely paid him any mind. There was no connection or influence to be gained. So why? Where was he?

It felt like a very long time before the wall next to him, the one facing the foot of his bed, suddenly flickered to life. He yelped again, scooting backwards on the seat of his pants, and stared in wonder. The wall was a screen, a very high quality one. An unfamiliar logo appeared on the monitor: half of a red leaf on a black background, with the letter pasted below them. A semi-circle slogan completed the logo…_God's In His Heaven, All's Right With The World_.

"Good morning!" a cheerful voice sang. A weather report appeared, detailing the week's forecast. "Today is going to be a beautiful day in the Village, with minimal cloud cover and soothing temperatures. Expect a high of 82 and a low of 73. Light winds from the southeast…"

He tuned out the rest of the forecast, standing up on shaky legs. _God's In His Heaven…_

He looked around for anything that might be his, but he saw no belongings. Glancing around his room, he saw a sliding closet door, windows with shades drawn, the main door. He opened the closet and saw rows of identical black jackets, shirts, and slacks, all school uniforms in a cadet cut. Matching shoes. He glanced inside one of them, and saw that it was his size. He dropped it on the floor, and saw that the other pairs were also his size. Feeling a rising panic, he grabbed a jacket; his size. He threw it onto the bed and checked, each article of clothing flying into the room. His size, his size, his size…

_All's Right With The World…_

He froze for a minute, and gathered his thoughts. Taking a deep breath, he strode to the window and opened the shades. It was a ceiling to floor window with a sliding door, leading out onto a balcony. He opened the door and stepped out, staring.

He could see the ocean to his left, a small wooded area, what appeared to be a small town, and a large building occupying the center, all in the crux of a series of rising foothills. The large building looked like a school or factory. He spotted what appeared to be a sport field next to it, but he couldn't be sure. It was a safe bet that he was looking at a school, however, so that's what he dubbed it in his mind. The School.

He tried to recognize any feature of the town, but failed. He did not know this place.

Leaning over the railing, he saw he was on the third floor of a small apartment building that was isolated from the main town. There didn't seem to be any sign of life except for himself. He stood up, and hurried into the bedroom and made a bee line for the door. He tried to open it, and found it was locked. He struggled and strained, but couldn't even see how it was barred.

The screen flickered, and the NERV logo appeared again.

"Good morning! I'm glad to see you are awake."

He stared at the screen, his mouth open. He looked left, right, around. Was the television speaking to him?

"Well, don't stand there with your mouth hanging open like a trout. How was your rest?"

"Uh…it was…it was fine, I think."

"That's good. That's very good. I hope you like the accommodations: they're temporary, you understand. We are in the process of completing more permanent quarters for you on the other side of the Village, so we had to house you in the In-Processing Quarters. Now, if you'll please—"

"Who are you?"

"That would be telling. Now, if you'll please, I see you have been discovering the change of clothes we have for you. If you could take the least wrinkled of your outfits, and get dressed, we would like to welcome you more formally. If you would like, there is a change of undergarments and socks in the chest-of-drawers, and a bathroom where you can clean up a bit."

The door opened on its own, and the boy flinched away from it.

"Welcome to the Village. When you are finished, we will have someone pick you up downstairs. Don't dawdle, now. Be seeing you."

* * *

Mechanically, the boy examined the apartment within, and found it very basic, but comfortable. A combination kitchenette and dining area, a small guest room, and there the bathroom. Inside were several white towels, folded neat and waiting. Swallowing, he returned to the bed room and found a white undershirt and black boxers. It was not as though he had much choice in the color; all the shirts were white, and all the boxers black.

He showered briefly, not finding much comfort in the warmth, and toweled off. He dressed himself in the strange uniform, and noted on his left breast pocket was the number 6. All the coat pockets possessed a 6 over a small white version of the NERV logo, and he wondered what that could possibly mean. He was becoming more and more uneasy as he exited the apartment, which, like the bedroom, had a door that opened and closed on its own. No lock that he could see.

He walked down the hallway, listening for anything that might sound like occupants, and realized with a crawling sensation that he was alone in the building. His pace quickened, then hurried, and soon he was flying down the staircase and running towards the exit. He skidded to a halt outside the apartments on the sidewalk, head between his knees and feeling sick.

"Good morning!"

"Ah!" He stood up fast, causing his stomach to turn even more. Standing in front of him was a cheerful looking woman in her twenties or thirties, wearing a short skirt and jacket with a number 58 on it. She was quite pretty, and her hair was a dark shade of violet, almost purple. It was a striking feature, and the boy found himself unable to take his eyes off of it.

"I'm Number 58," she said with a smile. "I'm here to escort you into the Village. Welcome!"

"Ah…ah…I'm…Shinji—"

"You're new here, aren't you? You'll get used to it," she said cheerfully, tapping her chest. She was touching the number. He looked down at his. The number 6. Was that his…number?

"There are people eager to meet you, so please, let's be on our way." When she turned, the boy noted the NERV logo emblazoned on her back.

She led him to a small, two door vehicle, one that looked almost like a toy, with the ever present logo on its doors. It was meant for only two passengers, and when she started it, there was no sound of an engine. "All our vehicles here are electric," she explained, "But this is smaller than the one I prefer. Usually, I'm assigned a sedan, for work between our facilities."

"Facilities?"

"I probably shouldn't tell you more than that, but I can't help myself. I'm a bit of a blabber, and I enjoy speaking to new people. That's all right, though. I imagine we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other. I've been assigned to be your general handler, in addition to my other duties."

"Handler…what's your name?"

"You can call me 58."

"That's not a name," he mumbled, looking out the window. There was life appearing on the streets as shops were opened and people began the day. They all wore similar clothes, some in various uniforms, some office-appropriate wear. All of them had the NERV logo displayed prominently. That maddening leaf and slogan were everywhere, in some form or another. "What is NERV?" he asked.

58 smiled. "That would be telling, hon, and I don't intend to spoil the surprise. You'll learn everything you need to, in time. But at the right time."

"What's the right time?"

"That would be telling," she said in a singsong voice, waggling a finger at him. He gaped, small sounds forming in the back of his throat, and he gave up in frustration. If that was the only answer he would get, why bother talking?

The car pulled up to a chic looking townhouse, in a row of townhouses of similar build. "Here's your stop," she said, smiling, "When your done, I'll be here to pick you up and take you to the Processing Center. We'll get you in order."

He stared at the house, then at her, then at the house. "Well, get moving!" she said, still cheerful but with some volume. "Not everybody gets to go in there, you know! I'll be here when you're done, no worries!"

Strangely, that did feel comforting. He didn't know 58 from anyone, didn't really trust her, but she seemed nice enough. It was rare he encountered someone who exuded such friendliness. He felt a wall suddenly rise in his mind, and he drew back for a moment, suddenly feeling uneasy. People were friendly when they wanted something. What was wanted with him?

With some hesitation, he exited the vehicle and stepped onto the road. He walked up to the porch, and saw that the number 2 was emblazoned on the door. Hesitating, he raised his hand to knock, and before his knuckles could rap the wood, it opened ahead of him.

He looked back hesitantly at 58. "Be seeing you!" she sang, and drove away. Swallowing, he entered a modern entryway, sparse but somehow luxurious. Behind him, the door closed, like a trap locking.

"Young sir," a voice called, and he glanced over at a man in a white jacket with black pants and a number 257 on the coat. "This way, please."

The boy followed with hesitant steps, until he was brought before an elevator door. "Onto the elevator, sir. It's automatic, and will take you to where you need to go." He entered the elevator alone, and the door slid shut. He felt a sudden drop as the compartment began to go down.

After half a minute, it opened, leading him into a black hallway that led towards a white lit doorway. He traversed the darkness, feeling sweat under his arms, and reached the door, again opening without anyone's touch to guide it. He entered, and saw he was in a great space, with a large desk at the center. There was a man seated, and a man standing. He walked up to the desk, regarded the standing man. He wore a purple uniform, with a white 2 imprinted onto his chest. His eyes fell on the man at the desk…

To see his father. Gendo Ikari. Seated there.

* * *

"Father!" he gasped. There was no mistake; even though his hands were clasped in front of his face as he leaned on the desk, that was his father. The boy tried to form words when the standing man spoke.

"Welcome, Number 6," he said clinically. That was the voice that came from the television. "We are glad you could join us. We understand you had a pleasant conversation with 58. She'll be more of a fixture, I can assure you."

"Father, where—"

"We know that there is some confusion," the thin man stated, "But it will subside. You will find this a nice place to live, as long as you play by the rules. There aren't many, but they are sacred, so I would advise you try to remember them."

The boy glared at the man, then back at his father. There was that sinking feeling again…and a cold, rising anger. Disgust. A darkness came over his face. "Who are you?" the boy asked, addressing the standing man.

"I'm Number 2."

"And I guess he's Number 1," he mumbled, pointing at his father.

"That would be telling."

"Did he bring me here?"

"We have things we need you to do…"

"What is NERV?"

"That would be tel—"

"Shut up!"

The silence was deafening. The boy looked off to side, feeling sick and trapped. "I want to leave."

"There is no leaving. There is no going back. There is only forward."

"I want to leave."

"You are here for the duration, Number 6. How long that is depends on you."

"Stop calling me that."

"We have much work to do, Number 6, so—"

"My name is Shinji!" he screamed, closing his eyes. His right hand was trembling, the fingers working out a little staccato on his palm without his control or awareness. "Stop calling me Number 6." For a long while, the boy stared down at the ground, shivering.

"You are Number 6," 2 repeated with bravado. "You must be processed. Number 58 will be waiting for you. Do not break the rules. You will help us, Number 6, and we will help you."

The boy stared at the man, then at his father. The cool eyes continued to regard his son, but what lay behind them was unreadable.

* * *

On the drive away from the townhouse, the boy had to stop and be sick in a trash bin next to the road. 58 stood next to him with a hand on his shoulder. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Stupid…stupid…" he hissed. "God _damn_ him!"

After a moment, 58 guided him back into the car, and the drive continued. "We were able to expedite your quarters. It's a bungalow, not far from the School. You're only 14, so you'll need a guardian. I'll arrange to take over one of the bed rooms, if that's all right with you. 'Kay?"

"I want to go home."

"You'll be there soon. First, the Processing Center—"

The car door opened, and Shinji fell out of the moving vehicle. 58 squeaked, slamming the brakes, and engaging the parking break. She rolled out of the car, and rushed down the street. Shinji was on his hands and knees, trying to stand up. "Oh my God! Are you all right?"

"Let me go home," he cried, trying to walk down the street but unable to get his legs under him. He didn't even know where home was, or what he could properly call home, but this wasn't it. This was just some twisted little game his father was playing. A big hamster wheel, and he had to get out before the whole ordeal started.

He had finally made it to his feet, but he couldn't walk a straight line. 58 put her hands under his arm pits, supporting him. She stepped back, gently dropping him into a sitting position so she could better examine him. He had torn the hem on one of his pant legs, opened oozing scrapes in his palms, and cut his cheek. Other than that, he was remarkably no worse for wear, mostly just stunned.

"What the hell did you think you were doing? Were you trying to get killed?" she said, genuine concern in her voice.

"I just…want…to leave. Please let me leave…" he said weakly. He was staring at the cuts in his hands. Blood was starting to drip on to his lap. 58 seemed at a loss. She sighed, looking up. People were starting to stare. She brought her attention back to the boy, and helped him up.

"Come on, you'll bleed all over yourself. Let's get you cleaned up, okay?" she said with a smile, one hand on the back of his neck. He seemed to calm a bit at that, and he let her guide him to the boot of the car.

In the small trunk, there was a first aid kit. 58 bandaged his wounds decently enough, and they got back in the car. "Don't do anything else like that, okay? I have to keep an eye on you, and I can't do that if it's gonna be a suicide watch," she chided.

He said nothing. "Hey…hey, 6, you in there?"

"Call me SHINJI!" he snarled, glaring at her. She was stared at him in shock for a moment before turning her attention back to the road. The rest of the trip was in silence.

* * *

Processing was a simple enough, much to 58's disgust. "I've never seen a more pitiful dossier," she complained. "Hobbies, none, music, none, sports, none. You're lucky they had the sense to put Japanese as your ethnicity. If it was up to me, I would have put 'stump.' No matter. Here, take this."

She stuck an envelope in his face, and he looked at it in wonder. Gingerly accepting it with both hands, 58 continued to prattle on. "It has a purchasing card, which will recharge each month, an ID card, medical card, and a school ID. Keep each of them with you at all times. And here's home!"

The car parked in front of a small bungalow, one of a dozen or so on a hill just behind the School, in easy walking distance. Like everything else, it seemed modern, almost prefabricated, but not uncomfortable. 58 walked briskly up to the door, with the boy following behind at a snail's pace. He entered the building, looking around. Another place he didn't know.

An overwhelming tiredness crept up on him, and he dropped the envelope on the floor. He saw a chair, and sat on it, helpless. Things were out of his control. They were always out of his control. He didn't know what to do. He just wanted out.

"Every thing's in order here," 58 said, appearing from the back rooms. "There's a bed room that overlooks the School, that will be your room. I'll take the one closer to the front of the house. That way you can have some privacy. I have to leave for a moment, but I'll be back shortly. Just make yourself comfortable, okay?"

The boy said nothing. 58 stood in the entry hall, gazing at him. "Shinji," she said, quietly, walking over to him. The boy's head raised, skeptical.

"My name is Misato…Misato Katsuragi." She smiled warmly, and extended a hand. "Pleased to meet you!" The boy looked at it in wonder, then at her. Gingerly, he accepted the hand.

"Shin…Shinji Ikari," he responded.

* * *

"Shin…Shinji Ikari."

"Barely here for a day, and already has one of our adjutants breaking the rules," Number 2 commented, studying the camera angle. "I'll pull her immediately."

The man known as Gendo waved an indifferent hand. "Ignore it," he said quietly.

"Ignore it?"

"It's irrelevant to our needs. Let it go."

"We made the rules for a reason," Number 2 countered, "Breaking them could have consequences we don't foresee."

"Kozo," he replied, "I could care less what transpires between the boy and the woman. He is not the hero of this story. He doesn't have it in him, and his ability to negatively affect our plans is minimal. I assure you of that."

Number 2, the man known as Kozo, pondered that. "Well…if you have such doubts as to his harmful nature, what makes you think he will be useful?"

Gendo smiled. "Believe me, everything has its use, even our little Village experiment. My son may not be useful on his own, but he might be just one of the necessary levers to tip things towards the ultimate goal."

He leaned back, and closed his eyes. "It's just a game, Kozo" he said, "A game within a game. Wheels within wheels." He nodded to himself, watching the scene replay. "Children's games," he said, with a note of finality.


	2. First Day Grinds

Shinji did not sleep that night, even though the bed was very comfortable. He lay on top of the sheets, staring at the ceiling with a sense of dread. His guts squirmed, and his teeth ached. He wished to be anywhere but here.

The woman numbered 58, who was now Misato to him, had done little to ease his fears. She proved to be a curious individual, to say the least. She was enthusiastic, eager, over-excitable, and such a bundle of energy that the more serene Shinji did not know what to do or how to react to her. He simply let her bubbly demeanor wash over and through him, and would wait and see what was left in the wake, like collecting sea shells from the shore. It was the only way he could process everything.

If she was to be believed, she was someone of certain importance in NERV. "Don't let the circumstances fool you," she said, "Aside from being your nanny and tour guide, I have a busy agenda. You'll see more about it later, but consider yourself lucky to be rooming up with me. You'll get access to stuff, learn some things, expand your horizons!

"Listen to me go on," she sighed, sitting over the remains of a largely inedible meal (her treat). "I'm sorry, I don't mean to soapbox. I've been living alone for the last couple of months, and the silence could drive you crazy! It's nice to have a roomy again." She stood up and stretched, and Shinji blushed as her undershirt rose up again, baring her stomach and panties. Professional in the community of the Village, she was downright libertine in her habits indoors. She was a terrible cook, a ruthless tease, and a scandalous dresser when released from her uniform. But…

Shinji rolled over on the bed, remembering what she had said. "All right, time to hit the sack! You're first day of school is tomorrow, so don't stay up late. You need anything, come knock on the door! Doesn't matter what hour; I might gripe at you, but I'm here to help!"

Here to help. Was she here to help, or she was simply here to play his father's game? Was this his father's game, or was there something above it? Someone?

What did it matter? He didn't care, he just wanted to leave. Still…still…it was nice to have Misato in the house. The idea of sleeping, alone, in that massive apartment building made his guts squirm even more. And it was hard to tell, but she did seem genuinely friendly. It made him draw back into his mind, but it was still nice to know that she may truly care. He had to wait and see. He burrowed down into his hands, his feet curling up, and he lay in a fetal position until dull pink light shone through his window. "So," he thought, "the sea is to the east." He would remember that. He needed a way out, and direction would help.

Truly unable to sleep, he sat up and dressed himself. Looking at his table clock, he saw it was 4:32 in the morning. He sat on his bed, staring out the window, until 5:30, when he decided to go explore the kitchen, if only to get there before Misato.

It was well stocked, with a plethora of NERV brand items. NERV salt. NERV sugar. NERV flour. NERV baking soda, NERV eggs, NERV bacon, NERV coffee. NERV coffee filters. The amusing thought of NERV chickens with little leaves on their wings laying eggs with logos printed on the eggs ready made skipped through his brain.

"NERV, NERV, NERV, NERV," he mumbled to himself, chewing on the word like it was a canker sore. He wordlessly began collecting items for breakfast. He had learned to cook for himself a long time ago, and possessed a remarkable library of recipes in his head. Western cuisine, Japanese, Chinese…he even knew a little Salvadorian, by sheer accident. It was not that he had any special love for cooking. It was like playing the cello; no one had told him he couldn't or shouldn't. No one told him to stop.

So he did. He played the cello. He cooked food. He stayed quiet.

Misato walked sideways into the kitchen at about 6:12, lured by the smell of bacon, eggs, coffee, and toast. "Shinji, you can cook?" she asked. It came out as "Mmmshinji, yoonk uk?", but he got the gist of it.

"For awhile. How many eggs do you want? I made them sunny side up, but I can make more if you like."

"Five."

"F..five? Five eggs?"

"Yes. Five eggs, and a lot of bacon. How much coffee do we have?"

"Uh, a pot, but I don't like it. I just…made it to make it, I guess."

"I'll have the pot," Misato announced, taking it out of the percolator and declaring it her mug. There was orange juice and jam on the table, again, courtesy of their benefactors and overlords, and Misato began to demolish her food. By the time she was finished, she was leaning back in her chair, her shirt pulled up over her stomach and her hands happily rubbing her belly with the enthusiasm and love of a pregnant woman. It made Shinji remarkably uncomfortable, and he scurried to the sink to begin washing his plate. And rewashing it, just to be safe.

He couldn't tell if Misato was unaware of his discomfort, or knew about it and was doing…what she did, on purpose. "That's not bad," she said, a happy note in her voice. "You should have put that in your dossier. Is there any other secrets you kept from In-Processing?"

"Um…" He thought about his self-reflection the night before. "I can…I can play the cello."

"Anything else? Sports?" she asked, suddenly energized by the confession.

"No."

"Nothing? No baseball, or basketball? What about swimming?" she asked, standing up and stretching. An audible pop exploded in the dining room, and Shinji flinched at the sound.

"I can't swim."

"What? That's not right for a boy your age to be unable to swim," she said, her face screwing up and her arms crossing in consternation.

"No one taught me," he said, looking at her. Her expression was serious, and he was suddenly afraid that he had done something wrong. He turned back to the sink to avoid her gaze.

Misato sighed, suddenly sad. The morning was starting out so well, too. "Shinji, would you like to learn how to swim?" she said cheerfully. The boy glanced up, curious. "We have a sport here on the island called kosho. It's really fun, kind of a mix of martial arts and swimming." He squinted, and she waved her hands in the air. "Trust me, it makes sense. It's awesome! Let me teach you how to swim. I bet you'll learn to love it. And maybe, you can give kosho a try."

The idea of martial arts, especially near deep water, made his right hand start twitching, and he shrugged. He didn't know what to do. He really did not want to learn how to swim. Water frightened him, and the idea of drowning was a constant source of terror. He had nightmares about drowning, and felt he had to wake himself up, or he would stop breathing in his sleep and die. He looked up at Misato, suddenly miserable.

Her arms were still crossed, but she had a friendly expression on her face. Her eyes were bright, and she looked so…eager. He didn't want to swim…but he didn't want to say no to Misato, either.

"Okay," he said meekly. "I'd like to learn."

"Great!" she said, throwing her arms in the air in celebration. "We can do so after school today! When I get off work, I'll take you to the gym. I'll be sure to acquire a bathing suit for you while your at class."

"Yeah…that'll be fine," he said, nervously. He felt his nerves twist at the idea of swimming after school, which got him thinking about going to the School, which made him doubly nervous, and he scurried out of the kitchen to throw up in the bathroom. Misato watched his passage with bemusement.

"Oh, Shinji," she sighed, "We have a lot of work to do with you, buddy."

* * *

When Shinji left, Misato insisted he try to get used to responding to and introducing himself by his number. He said nothing, by which she decided if he wasn't agreeing, he wasn't disagreeing either. He left the bungalow in a dreary state, and dragged his feet all the way down the hill.

The School was apparently intended for all children on the Island, which surprised Shinji. He knew that the Village was small, but the student body population implied many more people living here than the buildings could house. He wondered if there were other Villages on the Island, or subterranean structures. Still, the School was hardly crowded; it was, in fact, woefully empty in comparison to the structure's size.

Regardless, there _were_ a lot of children here. Strangely, Shinji noted, they all seemed to be close in age.

That thought in mind, Shinji reported to the central office, where his number was given a curious glance by every person coming and going. He was issued a red laptop, and told he was assigned to class 2-A. He picked his way down the halls, noting that every child here also had their own numbers. For some reason, his was drawing attention, and it made him uncomfortable. He heard whispering and muttering in his wake, and he found he loathed that number 6 even more. He didn't want anyone to notice him, and he felt that by the end of the day, everyone would know who he was.

He slipped into class 2-A and made a beeline for an empty seat, sitting down rapidly and hunching over, hoping the number would be more obscured. He was still sitting there when he heard a voice with an irritated tone address him. "Hey, new kid. That's my desk." Shinji looked up to see a tall boy with a sharp face and severe haircut, wearing a glower that seemed very natural. His jacket bore the number 707.

"Eh…I'm sorry. I can…" As he was stuttering, the tall boy caught a glimpse of the 6, and grimaced.

"What the hell? You're Number 6? How are _you_ Number 6?" This seemed to aggravate him more than the issue of the desk, and Shinji felt himself cringing.

"He's Number 6? Wow!" A freckled boy with messy hair and large glasses appeared next to Number 707. He had a 713 on his on shirt. "How did you get such a low number? You must be very important!"

"Shut it, 713," Number 707 snapped, and he leaned down low over Shinji. "So, what? You're Number 6 and you think you're better than everyone else in here? That make you think you can sit anywhere you want?"

"I don't think I'm better than anyone!" Shinji pleaded, feeling the number burn on his chest like a brand. The plea only seemed to set 707 off even more, and he grabbed Shinji's shirt front. As he hauled Shinji to his feet, a small, pigtailed girl walked swiftly up, and grabbed one of 707's ears, twisting it. He yelped, letting go of Shinji and leaning over towards the girl.

"I will _not_ have you beating up a new student in the class room!" she snapped. Shinji grabbed his laptop and backpedaled from the scene. The girl turned, roughly guiding the boy into his chair. He collapsed into it with a huff.

"I'm sorry, I'm…sorry, Class Rep, letgoofmyfriggingEAR!"

She gave it a twist for good measure, and then released it. She fixed her steely gaze on Shinji, then softened and smiled. "I'm sorry. 707 is nice when you get to know him, but he likes to make people think he's in charge. I'm Number 701. I'm the Class Rep, so if there's anything you need, please ask. Welcome!" She extended a hand, and Shinji gingerly accepted it.

"Um…thanks." The girl leaned forward, squinting at the number.

"Huh. That's weird; they don't give numbers out that low to anybody. Is it really yours?"

"Apparently," Shinji said, which was as close as he would get to saying that he was Number 6. She cocked her head at the half-hearted agreement, and shrugged.

"I bet you're new here to the Island, right? Yeah, the number thing is kind of doofy. Just go along with it; it makes the adults irritated when we don't." Shinji said nothing, looking at the class room. All the students were staring at him, and there was a crowd gathering at the door. 701 followed the gaze.

"Hey!" she screamed, "What's everyone looking at? We have a new student! Nothing weird about that, right? Who are you at the door? If you don't belong in 2-A, shove off!"

Shinji stared in amazement as everyone rushed to follow the commands of the authoritative pixie. She turned back to him. "I guess you need a desk, right? You can take the one next to 100, since she also has a low number. She's usually late, though." 701 walked over to a desk, offering it to Shinji. "They say she _does_ work at NERV, but I don't know what a kid would do with them. Anyway, she's excused a lot. If they have important things for you to do, maybe you'll get to know her better!"

"Okay," Shinji mumbled, sitting in the chair. He smiled, shyly, and said, "Thanks. I've been sideways since yesterday."

"No problem. But remember, you do anything to disrupt the perfect record of 2-A, you'll have to deal with me!" She said it with a dangerous yet mischievous look. Shinji smiled a bit more openly, though he didn't doubt the steel of her words.

So…he was in a class now. In the School. It seemed he was being inducted into this place. All this time, he had yet to identify himself as Number 6.

* * *

The classroom work was…strange, to say the least. It wasn't anything like Shinji had learned at other schools. Logic problems, riddles, nonsensical questions that really didn't have right or wrong answers. _If Mister Thimble goes to the store and buys 5 pounds of cheese, then gives 1/4 pound to Mister Thin, gets 2 more pounds from Missus Think, and gives away 1 2/3 pounds to Miss Thought, why would Mister Thimble still need so much cheese?_ Other questions focused on the curious Mister Thimble's morality, ethics, and ability to make proper decisions. By the end of the day, he had a piercing headache from the sheer absurdity of it all. He decided he really didn't care so much about Mister Thimble anymore, unless it was news that the idiot had been run over by a car.

He was leaving the building when he heard a familiar voice shouting. "Hey, 6!" He ignored it, and kept walking. "6! New kid!" At the phrase 'new kid,' he stopped and turned. The boy numbered 707 walked up to him, his expression coarse. "Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"I…" Shinji swallowed, looking around. "I don't like that number."

"What's wrong with you? You have an important number like that and you don't like it?"

"It's not my name," Shinji said, suddenly defiant, "And I don't like people thinking I'm better than everyone!"

The boy crossed his arms, a skeptical look on his face. There was a long silence as he regarded Shinji, who in turn glared back at the boy. "For real? You really don't like having a number?" 707 asked, a hint of wonder pushing at the words.

"Do you?" Shinji asked. The boy blinked, seemingly surprised by the question. Shinji waited for an answer, and the kid seemed to deflate.

"I'm sorry. You don't seem so bad, all right? I take back what I said earlier. And, just for the future…we really don't ask questions like that. You shouldn't, either." The boy turned and left, walking back towards the Village. Shinji looked at the ground, thinking about what had just transpired. He closed his eyes, sighed, and turned to walk back up to the bungalow. As he did, he caught sight of someone standing in the schoolyard, staring at him.

He felt himself glued to the spot, and stared back. It was a thin girl, in a school uniform. He couldn't make out her number from here, but he was unnerved by how still she was. He probably wouldn't have even noticed her, if it wasn't for the fact that her hair was a deep, lavender blue. Her eyes were red as well, almost like two rubies set in her face. She seemed so…strange. Shinji felt his jaw drop, and a sweat build on the back of his neck. He had remembered reading about a term called 'high strangeness.' It described the feeling of being in otherwise normal circumstances, and discovering something completely abnormal about them.

That was what he felt right now, looking at the girl. He began to feel trapped, the desire to run building, but not quite taking hold. He was finally compelled to shout at the girl, demand to know what it was that she wanted, when he heard Misato's voice. "Shinji!" He whirled around, his eyes wide and his movements jerky. The woman was walking up with a duffel bag.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you," she confessed, "But you weren't answering when I was saying '6.' We have to work on that. I can't keep coddling…hey, are you okay?" She put a hand on his forehead. "You look awful." Shinji glanced over his shoulder, to find that the girl was gone.

"Uh…I saw someone. I didn't know who they were. It…felt very weird."

"Oh? Who did you see?" Misato asked, following his gaze curiously.

"A girl. She had blue hair and red eyes."

"You saw Number 100," she said. "That's weird. She was supposed to be doing tests today. Guess they let her out early. Don't know why she's down here. Whatever. Let's go ahead and hit the gym. You look a little queasy, but I'd rather just get you in the pool and comfortable with soaking. You know? Being in water and knowing it won't kill you?"

Shinji nodded, and followed Misato to the car. It was a sedan this time, a sporty little black vehicle that looked very fast and very luxurious. Considering the reaction to his own number, and the appearance of the car, he had to admit that Misato _must_ be important, being 58. That was something to know.

He entered the vehicle, tossing his new laptop into the backseat, and she sidled into the driver side, plopping the duffel bag in his lap. He grunted, turning it over.

"This'll be fun, all right? We'll go, have a blast, then you can show me your talent at cooking dinner." She gave him another brilliant smile, and started the car.

A strange mood came over Shinji, something warm and pleasant. "Um…Mis—" She put a finger on his lips. "Careful. Only in the house," she said with a smile, then tapped her number.

"Uh…58," he said, the numerals tasting strange as he said them. "Thanks. Thank you." She looked at him, in confusion.

"For what?"

"For…you know. The bungalow. Doing this. I mean, you don't have to teach me to swim…but…thanks." He suddenly felt bashful, and turned towards the window. It had taken a lot for him to say that.

Something in Misato sensed the effort he had expended in forcing that out. "Hey, whatever," she said, poking his shoulder, "Your welcome, kid." With that, she backed out, and set them on the road, leaving Shinji, for a while, to his thoughts about the encounter with Number 100.


	3. A Lesson of Limit

It took Shinji thirty minutes to work up the courage to leave the locker rooms. It wasn't that the swimsuit was immodest, as it went well down to his knees. But it was _tight_, and that only served to remind Shinji of how skinny he was. It was clear that, like most things here at the Village, there was a certain uniformity to things; which meant that this was the only style of swimsuit he would find to wear, for better or worse. Thus, if Misato continued these swimming lessons, he was going to be forced to wear this ridiculous thing a lot. Combined with the fact that the majority of the men he saw in the locker room were much more fit, his own self-doubt and personal loathing bubbled to the surface.

He nervously made his way to the pool, and found Misato waiting there. Again, not an immodest swimsuit, but tight. Shinji blushed nervously. It was as though Misato had been designed to assault every single fantasy and insecurity that a teenage boy could possibly possess. After getting an eyeful of Misato, he had pounced into the shallow end, eager to put some sort of physical barrier between her and him, as if to reinforce those few remaining mental barriers.

That had got her laughing, and for a good hour, she took the time to explain all the niceties and complexities of swimming. How to float, proper strokes, this and that. The whole time, Shinji found his creeping sensation of being in water slowly evaporating. Just standing in the pool, he found, was strangely soothing. By the time the hour was up, he found himself reluctant to leave.

"See?" Misato chided, "Not so bad. Enjoyable once you get over it, right?"

"Right," he agreed. She had thrown a towel at him, and he had wrapped it around his shoulders.

"We'll try floating next, still in the shallow end. That's what throws a lot of people when they're trying to swim. You try to float, then you start sinking, and water goes up your nose, and next thing you know, you're panicking. Got to get that out of the way first. Makes everything easier later," she chattered, escorting him back towards the locker rooms. "You'll like it. Now go get dressed. There's showers in the locker rooms, so feel free to take a hot one and relax a bit. I'm going to shower myself, so I don't know how long I'll be. If you need something, just have the front desk page me."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. He was still unhappy calling her '58' in public, but there didn't seem to be anything against saying 'sir' or 'ma'am,' so he went with that. Entering the locker room, he realized that it was empty. Circling to his own locker, he found the reason why sitting at a bench.

"Number 6!" Number 2 said happily, "Getting along with your new keeper?"

"Yes," Shinji said, quietly, sitting down on the bench.

"It seems you're adapting well. I'm surprised that you are still so reluctant to accept your number, however. Perhaps if we had told you off the bat the significance of it?"

Shinji pulled the towel over his head, a little private cave that gave him some modicum of a shield against Number 2. "No," the older man agreed, "That would not have worked for you. You need to be eased into these things. Still, I must say that it surprises me. I was led to believe you were a hard-working, obedient boy who did what was expected. It was such a good quality we had observed, and yet here you are still dragging your feet towards the inevitable."

He stood, straightening his uniform. "There are those," and by those, Shinji immediately found the image of his father in mind, "Who doubt your use to the organization, and yet still give you remarkable leeway. I find that this is often a test, for me as well as others. Doesn't that make you feel better? To know that even at the top, there are tests for us as well?"

"Is that what NERV is? A…a test?" Shinji asked.

"That would be telling. But suffice to say that all of us, from the top of the heap to the base of the pyramid, will find themselves tested here. As will you. We need to assess you a bit more thoroughly, so tomorrow, expect to be pulled from school for a bit. We don't like to interfere with our children's educations, but there are some things that need doing more than others, you see."

"It's a weird education," Shinji mumbled, as Mister Thimble skipped through his mind.

"It serves other purposes. Just keep up with it. You'll get the hang of it in time."

"What if I don't?" Shinji whispered.

"Of course you will. You're a bright boy, and these are simple problems—"

"What if I don't work? What if refuse?" Shinji clarified, with a little more heat than he intended.

Number 2 weighed the words and the tone. "Well, Number 6, your little rebellions have been tolerated because you are a child, and children rebel. But even children must be disciplined. We all have boundaries, some greater and some lesser. Perhaps you will expand the limits of your boundaries in time. For now, though, I feel you need to be reminded of the consequences of when you break too many rules. Expect a…subtle reminder this evening. I hope that the lessons you learn from that, Number 6, will be a truly educational experience." Number 2 gave a smile that was, on the surface, friendly, but seemed predatory underneath. Shinji gaped at him for a moment, but the man turned and left, lazily calling over his shoulder, "Be seeing you."

* * *

On the drive home, Shinji got to learn precisely what Number 2's idea was of a subtle reminder. It happened as they were approaching an oncoming car, a delivery van. It was still a good distance away when…something…slammed into the side of it, cartwheeling it over.

Misato slammed the brakes, her expression suddenly ashen. "Stay still," she whispered. Shinji had slammed his hands into the dash at the sudden halt, his expression frantic.

"What? What was that!" he began jabbering. Misato suddenly shot an arm out, pressing him back against his chair.

"Stay still! Do not move!" she hissed. Shinji fought to do just that, and got a clear look at whatever it was that hit the van. It was still bouncing in the road, a large white sphere that looked almost like a weather balloon. There was a horrid buzzing that began to fill the car, and the thing began to circle the van like a dog circling a peace of meat. As it moved, a roar, more felt than heard, warped the air and the fabric of Shinji's mind. He began trembling violently.

The driver of the van had begun to crawl from the cabin, dazed and unthinking. The van was on it's side, so she had to crawl up and out through the passenger side door. When she finally cleared it, she had fallen to the street. The thing approached lazily, moving as though pulled by a string. The passenger finally perceived it, and began trying to crawl around to the other side of the van. This only brought the whole ordeal into better view for Misato and Shinji. With a sudden burst of speed, the white bubble came down on top of the woman. Shinji heard screaming, horrible, _horrible_ screaming, as the bubble shook and quivered for a moment. Soon, it was still, and it drifted a bit down the road. Of the woman, there was no trace.

With a final roar, it rocketed into the sky, leaving no trace of its presence save the destroyed van and memory of its passing.

For a long time, the two occupants of the car just sat there. The overwhelming odor of urine filled the cabin, but neither seemed aware of its presence. Finally, Shinji tried to form a question. "What…?" he whispered. "What…?" He couldn't get past the first word. It seemed his mind was looping.

"Rover," Misato breathed. "It was Rover."

* * *

The meal that night was massive, what would have been a feast for a small family, but neither of them ate much. Shinji had started cooking, and a strange mania had gripped him. He was unable to stop, and Misato felt reluctant to stop him. It seemed as though he was trying to use heavy work as a means to erase the image of what he had seen. It seemed to work, externally: by the time he had pulled the last item from the oven, his hands were no longer trembling.

As they sat before the piles of food, picking at their plates, Misato finally spoke. "Rover is…a watch dog. In a way. He keeps us in the areas we belong. People like me don't have to worry as much, as there's very few places on the Island I'm not allowed access, but others…" she seesawed her hands. "Usually, he just shows up, and that's it. Maybe he'll push you, but he's generally not violent." The fact she kept referring to it as a 'he' stood out to Shinji. He managed to eat a bite of food, but there was no flavor to it. Misato continued. "I can't imagine why it was that Rover behaved so violently. I know it happens every now and then, but it's rare. I guess that woman was way outside of her designated zone. She should have been more careful."

Shinji said nothing. He very much doubted that the woman who had been killed in front of him was not where she was supposed to be. That was for his benefit. All because he said he wouldn't do his school work. Or was it more than that? Was it something to remind him that there were, somehow, rules weighing everything down?

These rules, these rules. What _were_ the rules? Everyone kept talking about them, but the only rule he had seen was that concerning numbers. Were the rules arbitrary? Did they change from day to day? He looked at Misato, compelled to ask, but he kept silent. Finally, the tension was too great.

"When was I going to learn about him? About Rover?"

Misato sighed, and gave him a guilty smile. "In case you hadn't noticed, we aren't supposed to talk about a lot of things here. You learn about these things when you need to."

"Like boundaries? I don't know where my boundaries are. How do I know I won't turn down a street and get eaten?"

She didn't have an answer for him. He dropped his fork on the plate in irritation, and went to his room.

* * *

His dreams were feverish. In them, he stood naked in a great black space, and in front of him was the girl who was called 100, standing just as nude. He didn't feel embarrassed, but he felt frightened, and vulnerable. It seemed that he had no defenses, and she had no restraints.

They stood, their eyes locked into each others. Her face seemed familiar, now, that they were so close, but Shinji couldn't be sure if it was her actual face, or if he was patterning it on someone else's. He seemed to know that he was dreaming, but only in that backwards logic that made sense in dreams.

"You are Number 6," she said, in a quiet and clear voice.

"I am Shinji," he said.

"That is not a number," she replied.

"I'm not a number," Shinji insisted.

"All things are numbers," she said bluntly.

"I wouldn't know," he replied. That was truthful, for he had never been good at math.

"You are Number 6," she repeated.

He looked away. "I won't say it." The girl was suddenly in his peripheral vision, approaching from the side she had _not_ been one. It seemed her motions were out of place, one moment too fast, and the next too slow, and yet all in it's proper time. She extended a delicate hand, and the tip of her index finger rested on the spot between Shinji's eyes. To his credit, he neither flinched nor trembled, but continued to regard her. The dread he had felt of her was being replaced by a strange combination of curiosity and wonder.

"You ask too many questions," she said. It seemed a rebuke and a warning.

"I don't have any answers," he replied.

"The individual integers do not require answers, merely the fulfillment of their role in the equation. We are compelled by the inscrutable forces of natural law and mathematical fact. We move from one point to the next, drawn by a string written by the universe. In this Village, we see the strings. Is that not better than living where those strings are invisible?"

He was surprised by her sudden verbosity. He wondered if the words were her own, or if she was repeating something she had heard. The girl shook her head, almost sadly. "You ask too many questions," she said again.

"If you don't ask questions, how will you learn things?" he asked. Her expression didn't change, but her eyes seemed to take a note of sadness.

"You will learn what you are meant to learn," she said. She withdrew her hand, and as she did, the black space seemed grow brighter. Slowly, it began to take a fuzzy consistency, and something told Shinji that he was waking up. He looked at the girl one last time. She had cupped her hand over her right eye, peering through space at him as though looking through a telescope.

"Be seeing you," she intoned, and the dream collapsed.

* * *

The first half of the day continued to be the bizarre logic puzzles and strange questions requesting stranger answers. Shinji still felt tremors from the sight of Rover yesterday, but now he also felt a curious frustration, even anger. He had planned to simply sit and ignore the questions, but a childish impulse arose, and he began to answer them without a thought or care.

_When would a minute have 61 seconds?_

An ostrich.

_What dance do angels dance on the head of a pin?_

Candlestick.

_If a tree falls in a forest, is the tree wasted?_

Zoot suit.

_What is the equation?_

Shinji blinked, something about that question causing him to pause. It was just as vague as the others, but strangely specific. It felt as though it was directed at him and him alone. He glanced to his left. The desk where the girl numbered 100 was supposed to occupy remained empty. The slow details of the dream from the night before returned with remarkable clarity, as did her insistence on the proper place of integers. The implication being, of course, that all humans are integers.

He snorted, causing a few students to glance at him before returning to their laptops. He typed his answer in capital letters: IRRELEVANT.

* * *

Two identical twins in suits, numbered 88 and 77, came to retrieve Shinji that day. Idly, he wondered if there was a 66 and a 99, if it was just twins, or if they came in a package. The two men had an uncanny habit of beginning and ending each others sentences, and Shinji decided that if there was, in fact, more of them, he didn't want to find out. The idea of a chorus of identical men skipping a sentence amongst themselves like a volleyball seemed less amusing and more unnerving.

They drove into the hills, to the west of the School. Shinji stared out the window, noting the woods. They were wild and unhindered, and it only reminded him of his own fences. He had decided that this Village, this whole place, was a prison of sorts. Everyone inside was somehow a prisoner, though some had more leeway and others less. For his own part, Shinji was being constrained mentally by the absurd tests, and physically by Rover. Not that Rover had actually threatened him directly in any way. There was no doubt in Shinji's mind, however, that should Number 2 decide it, Rover would be there. It made Shinji wonder what his actual boundaries were. He didn't want to test them, for fear of seeing that thing again.

Or was that the point? He pondered the Number 6, and the question he had asked Misato the night before. Misato was Number 58, and she had access to virtually the whole island. Did that mean that he, as Number 6, had greater access?

He didn't know. Frankly, he was too scared to test the theory.

His thoughts were broken as they pulled onto an access road that led away from the main road. Shinji watched in curiosity as they approached a house in the woods. As they got closer, it seemed to be more of a mansion than a simple house. The car parked in front, and Shinji was told to get out and enter the home. He did so gladly, wanting to put distance between himself and the bizarre twins. As he approached the front door, it opened obligingly for him, and entered the building.

In the entry hall, there stood Number 100. He felt his chest tightened, and his mouth went dry. She stared at him, coolly, and he stared back. He did not have dread this time, but he felt a sudden anticipation of the unknown now that he was actually confronted with her. He was surprised to see that her features were exactly as he had imagined them in the dream.

"You are Number 6," she said.

"Apparently," he managed. It had become his default answer to that statement or question, a tacit acknowledgment of the number he had been assigned if not the outright agreement that it was his number.

"I am Number 100," she said.

"So I've heard," he mumbled. They stood there, and Shinji began to feel awkward. "I'm…here to do some tests or something."

"Follow." She turned, and began walking into the house. Shinji obeyed, passing through what seemed to be a living room. The house had that same crawling sensation of being empty, even with the girl in front of him. He was beginning to feel panic when she led him into a side-room, which was brightly lit and colored a cool gray. There were two chairs in the room, both of which had curious helmets with goggles perched in them.

"So…what…what do we do?" Shinji asked, but 100 ignored him, occupying one of the chairs and placing the helmet on her head. She leaned back in the chair, and was silent. He looked around, uncertain. He knew that he was expected to do the same, with the other chair, but he didn't wish to. He turned to leave, but the door closed behind him. He was trapped.

"Number 6," a voice called from a speaker in the ceiling.

He stared at the door, willing it to open. It was obstinate in its refusal. "Is there something wrong?" the voice called.

"I…need to use the restroom," he lied, feebly.

"We will allow the use of facilities later. Right now, it's important we conduct the test. Please, Number 6. The chair?"

His right hand squirmed, a nervous tic betraying his anxiety. 100 removed her goggles and fixed him with a curiously disparaging look, considering that her expression was so bland.

"Sit so we can begin the tests," she said. The voice was monotone, but to Shinji, it sounded irritated. Unhappy, he did so, sitting in the chair and placing the helmet on his head. And that was how the test began.

It was difficult to understand what exactly was supposed to be analyzed. For a long time, he sat in darkness, the goggles black and obscuring. Soon, however, colors and patterns began to flow across his vision. He watched the patterns shifting one way, then the next. Darkness one moment, light the second. Shapes came and went, tetrahedrons and spheres, some complicated, some simple.

After a while, he began to grow bored, and wished he could do more with the patterns than simply watch. As that errant thought tripped through his mind, he noted that a spark had appeared, which seemed to follow the focal point of his gaze. He flicked his eye left, then right, and the spark obediently followed. "Up," he thought, and the spark cleared the focal point, shooting up.

A strange, almost childish delight overcame him. "Down," he thought, and the spark obliged. It collided with a tetrahedron, which bounced away. He smiled, hoping the next one would shatter. He drove the spark into one, and he was not disappointed. For a few minutes, he gleefully smashed shapes left and right, and began to wonder what else he could make the spark do.

He made write his name. He made it bounce, he grew it and shrank it. He made it change its shape, from a small fuzzy ball to a sharp and angular triangle. He continued this for some time before he felt a hand on his shoulder. He took off the helmet, the afterimage of the patterns still floating in his vision. The girl was standing over him.

"The testing is completed," she said. "We can go now." The door opened, and he glanced at it, then back to 100.

"Um…okay," he mumbled, standing on weak legs and dropping the helmet in the chair. He followed the girl out, back into the living room, when she turned suddenly. He had to backpedal to avoid running into her.

"I will be at school tomorrow," she said, "I understand that I am seated next to you."

"Yes, I believe so."

"I would assume that testing went well for you?" Shinji tried to follow her thread of conversation, wondering at the rapid change of topics.

"I…don't know. I guess so. I didn't understand it. I kind of enjoyed it at the end."

"Enjoyed it?"

"Yeah. It felt kind of like a video game."

She didn't seem to understand. "I assume the testing went well for you," she repeated, though this time it was a statement. "In that case, we will probably be working together more in the future."

"Probably," he agreed without knowing why.

"I will be watching you, Number 6. I am curious to see what your progress is," she said, and turned as if to leave.

"Uh, wait," he asked. She gazed levelly at him. "What was…being tested?" She looked confused, and he pressed on. "What was the point of it? What were they testing us for?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You ask too many questions."

The dream he had came to mind, and he replied as he did then. "If you don't ask questions, how will you learn things?"

100 turned and walked out, stating, "I have already answered that question for you. I do not feel the need to repeat it." She left Shinji in the room alone, sputtering, and bewildered.

* * *

In another room in the house, the man known as Number 2 read the reports from the session. He was just as bewildered, gripping the computer printout in trembling hands. The test results were not what he had been led to believe they would be. They were far more significant than any others save Number 100's scores. He tried to categorize this in his mind, but was having trouble grasping it, for one ugly thought kept pushing to the surface. Number 6 was _not_ just a lever.

He had been misled intentionally.

* * *

"You lied to me."

On the Island, there were key chambers called No-Rooms. They had no taps, no bugs, no cameras, and were completely outside the veil of surveillance that covered the Island. Their locations were highly secretive, and only a few people knew they existed. Only one knew where they all were. That individual was occupying a particular No-Room with Number 2, who had again become Kozo Fuyutsuki.

"That boy has locks. Many locks. Not nearly as many Number 100, but they are there, and some of them were opened today. _You_ said he was useless." He was angry, and venting that anger. Gendo Ikari said nothing, staring at Kozo impassively. Kozo hissed, "Are you intentionally feeding his rebellious tendencies?"

"That would be telling," Gendo muttered.

"Damn it, Gendo!" Kozo snapped, suddenly unable to sit. He was nervous, and frustrated, and began to pace the room. "The purpose of this Island was to subvert individuality. To force people into creating linkages through barriers."

"Like funneling water through a pipe," Gendo intoned, a touch of humor in the words.

"Don't throw platitudes at me," Kozo snapped, "I told that boy I was being tested, and I imagined as much. I didn't realize what the nature of the test was! This is going to draw the worst sort of attention!"

"Do you?" Gendo leaned back, his hands on his knees. His expression was quizzical.

"Do…do I what?"

"Do you know the nature of the test? Truly? Do you see the plans I have in place? The position of the pawns? The subtle movement of the bishop?" He stood, and suddenly he seemed gripped by a rage of his own, something Kozo had rarely seen in the serene dispassion of Gendo. "Are my plans truly that transparent?" he hissed.

Kozo refused to back down. "You're not playing on one board, your playing on fifty. You have that many games going, you will slip up somewhere. That is advice. From a friend."

Gendo turned away, hooking his fingers behind his back in thought. He had become inscrutable again, and Kozo closed his eyes, summoning something like patience but not quite. "Is…" he began, then took a breath to steady himself. "Is the boy _truly_ useless to your plans?" Gendo said nothing, and he continued. "You have…a weapon down there, that does not realize it is a weapon. It is rebellious. Subtly, but that can grow. It has already been told that it is okay to rebel, by the woman _you_ assigned to be his handler. You have forbid us from correcting her behavior, which means that _she_ now thinks it is okay to rebel. I know that you see the danger there. What confuses me is why you are not taking actions to mitigate it. Those that you have to answer to will ask the same thing."

"If I told you that this little rebellion served a purpose towards our eventual goals, would that comfort you?"

"Is that the truth, or another lie?"

Gendo turned. "I told you, Kozo. Plans within plans. Wheels within wheels. I have a plan for everything, and you merely need to work with it. Trust me."

Kozo shook his head. "These plans are dangerous. What's the point of making these plans if I'm not privy to them? How will I know which direction to take? And more importantly, how do your plans appear to those above you?"

Gendo sneered. "That would be telling, Number 2." Kozo glared, knowing that he had been dismissed. He wanted to argue more, but he knew that he couldn't. The man known as Gendo had done his work well, he reflected bitterly, and it occurred to Kozo that, even he was to openly rebel, it would most likely be within Gendo's designs. And that's why he continued to serve him: because he truly did not know where his boundaries were. There was no knowing when he acted on his behalf, or Gendo's. For the kind of man Kozo was, it was simply safer to do as Gendo said. In that way, one at least knew they were being manipulated, and that was far more comforting than the unknown. Better to see the strings, as it was, then to not know they were there at all.

"Be seeing you," he muttered, and stalked out of the No-Room.


	4. Living Integers

**Note from Gob Hobblin**: Glad everyone's enjoying this so far. I've had a question or two about Rover and the general feel of the story. I am mixing NGE with the most excellent 60's tv show 'The Prisoner,' which is also famous for its 'Gainax Ending.' Seriously, if you thought EoE made no sense…

* * *

For the next two weeks, Shinji continued to be 'tested,' and discovered new features and elements to the test. Part of him looked forward to his sessions, but part of him continued to hold deep suspicion of what it all meant.

His swimming lessons continued with Misato, and after two weeks, he found himself more comfortable, if not necessarily more confident, in the water. Other than that, very little occurred to mark any rapid developments in his time on the Island. One thing that had changed was that Rover became a more constant presence in his life. The first time the living fence had appeared, Shinji had decided to try and scale one of the foothills near the bungalow, in order to get a better view of the Island. When he was twenty feet up the path, that unforgettable roar filled the air, and Rover was there, five feet in front of him. Shinji gasped, a deep sobbing sound, and he stood still. He was certain he was facing his mortal end.

The white bubble glided towards him with a gentle motion, and began to push him down the trail. When he reached the pavement of the road, it stopped, and continued to buzz at him. Shinji backed up on trembling legs, and the watch dog did not follow.

This was the nature of whenever Rover appeared. Shinji would try and go one place, and Rover would block him away. It seemed the entity was trying to create some sort of pattern in Shinji's behavior. For its credit, Rover went from being a dread fear to more of an irritating nuisance. Now whenever the roar occurred, Shinji would huff and roll his eyes, stomping back in the direction he had come from as the sphere buzzed threateningly.

Shinji found that a good deal of this was attached to his growing curiosity of Number 100. After the initial strangeness of their first true meeting, he had found he was compelled to seek her out, and try and get to know her. He was curious as to what her true name was, and he was especially curious as to why her face was so familiar. He couldn't remember, clearly, a face quite like it, but something deep in his heart told him he had seen those features somewhere before, somewhere important. Aside from rare moments in the class room, or under the close scrutiny of the testers, he never had time to ask her. Usually, he would try to catch up to her as she was leaving school, only to have Rover intercede itself between them, with such tenacity that Shinji had no idea of which direction 100 lived, much less anything else.

It became such an irritation to him that, in an especially daring moment that was not too well thought through, Shinji attempted to pop the bubble with a fork he had stolen from the cafeteria. This did nothing but produce a low and visceral grow from the thing quite unlike its normal buzzing and roar. Shinji wisely decided to avoid attempting the experiment again.

His only other source of information was Misato, who still felt compelled to keep to the codes of silence placed on her by NERV. He would beg her for information about 100, and Misato would shrug and say the same thing. "That would be telling."

As it happened, the solution presented itself on the last night of those two weeks, when 100 sought him out herself. The day had just finished, and the students of 2-A were gathering up their things to leave. 100 was, characteristically, absent, and her desk empty. He glared at it in frustration, suddenly having the urge to fling it out of the window just to…do something. Shake things up a bit. Rattle the cage. He sighed, and noticed he was the last one left in the class. Closing his lap top, he stood up from his desk, and exited the room…

…to run into Rei, standing quietly in the hallway. She was barely three feet in front of the door, and Shinji almost walked over her. He had stopped just in time to place himself an intimate three inches away from her face.

"Number 6. Did you have a productive day?" she said mechanically.

"Uh…stimulating," he lied.

"I desire to walk you home. Is that acceptable?"

He blinked. It was such a strange moment for him that he almost forgot to speak. "Yes!" he said. "Of course, I would love the company."

"Good. I have things I wish to discuss with you." She turned, and started to walk away. As she did, she grabbed his wrist, and practically began dragging him towards the door. He kept his pace with her, but she refused to let go of his arm. As they passed the few students left in the school, Shinji felt looks of confusion following after him. There was nothing intimate or romantic about 100's grip on his wrist. It seemed possessive. As they cleared the building, Shinji saw why. Fifty feet away, bouncing at a leisurely distance, Rover buzzed threateningly. It followed them up the hill and down the road, until Shinji and 100 arrived at the bungalow. As they entered the building, Shinji risked one last, over-the-shoulder glance. The white sphere was still there, still glaring, if such a thing could glare.

The door closed, thankfully cutting off the sight, and he felt 100 stop. She turned, and looked at him. "Is your home adequate for your needs?" she asked. It was a flat and forceful question, yet Shinji believed that the girl was trying to make small-talk.

"It's…it's comfortable," he admitted. She said nothing, her eyes boring into him. He glanced down, her fingers still locked on his wrist. "Ah…1…100," he stuttered. "Can have my hand back now?"

She looked down at her grip, then back at him. She seemed to puzzle over the answer, and then let go. "Thanks," he said, feeling the fingers on that hand tremble. "Can I make you something to eat?"

"You can cook?"

"Yes. What do you like?"

She turned her back to him and walked into the kitchen. He followed her, observing her movements. He would have said she was a robot, or artificial, if it wasn't for the few times he had been close enough to smell her sweat and her breath. If she was an artificial being, she was remarkably lifelike. If she was truly alive, on the other hand, she was remarkably stunted. She sat at the table, folding her hands in her lap and staring ahead. "I do not eat meat."

"Okay," he thought, pondering some possible choices. "Have you ever had a ratatouille?"

"I do not know what that is," she said.

"It's like a vegetable stew. A little bit of everything. It can be complicated or simple."

"I do not require complicated."

"Simple it is." He went to the refrigerator, and began collecting items for the recipe. As he set up his workspace and rinsed the vegetables, he felt her eyes on his back. She was watching him, but if it was with curiosity, or any expression at all, he couldn't tell.

"Have you found answers to your questions?" she asked.

"No," he said, chopping a carrot into small pieces.

"Have you decided to stop asking your questions?"

"I'll keep asking them" he said. He started on another carrot when he felt her presence next to him. He didn't even hear her stand up, and his eyes turned towards her. She was looking into his face, but her expression was…softer. Not as confrontational, or emotionless.

"Are you Number 6?"

He looked at her, trying to decide how to answer that. He turned away, and continued to chop the vegetables in front of him. Gently, she gripped his chin, and her hand firmly but gently turned his face towards her. She repeated the question, "Are you Number 6?"

The boy blinked, feeling a sudden nervousness. He made a fist with his hand, and gradually, as he gazed into her eyes, he felt his rebellious mind take hold. "I am Shinji," he said bluntly.

She seemed to be looking for something in his face, an intentness in her eyes. "You are Shinji," she said. "And Number 6."

"No," he said, turning towards her, positioning himself to put weight behind his words. "I am Shinji. That's all." She blinked slowly, processing the answer. She removed her hand from his chin, and then placed it on his chest. When she did, the world seemed to pulse, and Shinji's breath halted. There was silence, a physical, pressing halt, and it seemed that everything, everywhere had stopped.

"We are integers," 100 said, but her lips did not move. The voice seemed to be in him and around him, in the cracks in the walls and the air between molecules. "All things are integers. We are no exception."

"Integers don't have choices," he wanted to say, and somehow said it. His voice had just as much actual reality as 100's.

"Choice is an illusion, a mere product of stimuli and restriction. It is the final element within the process that forces us to accept X versus Y, based upon conditions represented by A, B, and C. There is no choice, only outcome."

"What you're saying makes no sense," Shinji pleaded, "Choice is not set in stone. There's more to human decision than stimuli or pressure."

"Like what?"

"Well…emotion. Desire. Need."

"Irrelevant. Emotion and desire are no more than masks to cover animal instinct and basic drives, need being the actual acceptance and acknowledgment of those same things."

"I don't accept that."

There was a silence, and the air seemed to vibrate. His response seemed to confuse her. "You…have no choice. There is no accepting or denying. It simply is. The universe does not care if you wish for it to stop or start."

"I don't live because the universe tells me to live. I live because I _want_ to."

100's hand snapped back, and together the two children gasped, as though coming up from beneath deep water. She retreated, her hands held in front of her like a shield. Emotions seemed to be flickering under her eyes, as though she couldn't decide which was appropriate for the moment.

"Impossible. Illogical. Your position is nonsensical and destructive. To deny the basic premise of the universe is to defy the laws that dictate how form and function govern," she rattled, her words rapid and chasing one another. "Life is equation, equation is law, law is final, we do not escape from that verdict. The rules are in place for our protection and our purpose, to give meaning to chaos and shape to shapelessness." Shinji's mouth dropped and his hands came up. She continued to back up, slowly, and still chattering. He had never seen something like this before, but if he had to guess, it seemed that girl was having a nervous breakdown.

"You cannot refuse the place that has been set for you and the number assigned to you. It was made for you, defined for you, you were born for it, you were designed to fill that role, made for the role, cut for the role, there is nothing for you but the role, and—"

Not thinking, but acting, Shinji stepped forward, grabbing the girl and hugging her. She squirmed, her rant cut off and her hands working to try and distance them. After a second, she stopped, and went limp. He felt very scared, of the girl and for her, but he didn't let go, and continued to hold the embrace.

"I…am…tired," she whispered.

"You don't need to try and convince me," he said, "It won't work. That's okay, though." She didn't say anything, but continued to lean against him. "Are you still hungry?" he asked.

"I do not need food," she whispered. Presently, she pulled away from him. Her face had become the mask of dispassion once again, and she stared at and through him. "I am going to leave now. Thank you for allowing me to visit," she said, the mechanical tone having returned.

"You're…free to visit whenever you want," he said. She blinked.

"I will consider your offer, and possibly do so in the future," she said. "Thank you." He walked her to the door, which opened for her. Before she stepped through, he stopped her.

"You have a name," he said, "I know you do. Not a number, but a name. Mine is Shinji. What is yours?"

Her eyes quivered for a moment, and her mouth worked noiselessly. She then turned, and left, leaving Shinji in wonder.

* * *

Ten minutes to the second after the girl numbered 100 had placed her hand on Shinji's chest, the Central Observation Unit was finally able to reestablish their feed to the bugs and cameras within the bungalow that housed Shinji and Misato. By that time, 100 had already departed.


	5. Just Is

**Note from Gob Hobblin:** I am not Patrick McGoohan, but I wish I could write like him. This is a not so subtle hint to take a look at the scene that inspired this passage, which is from the last episode of The Prisoner. It's a lot better. And, no, you won't be getting any spoilers to see this scene, because the episode makes very little sense. It's brilliant...but confusing.

* * *

Shinji found himself in a space, a vast room with no walls, no ceiling, no sides. All was dark, except for the circle of light he stood in. He was still, assessing his surroundings, when the sound of switch being flipped echoed in the emptiness. A tall pedestal appeared before him, and benches on either side came into view. The pedestal was occupied by a man in red robes, with a judge's wig perched on his head. The benches were crammed with men in white robes and wearing strange two-colored masks, with a white frowning half and a black grinning half.

"The defendant has been called," the Judge said, clacking his gavel. "How do you plead?"

Shinji looked around, realizing that…he was the defendant.

"Um…I don't…understand."

"How do you plead? Understand the rights or none of the wrongs?" the Judge chided, a strange look on his face.

"Am I in trouble for something?"

"Trouble for anything, wouldn't you know. Call the defense, and sort it out," the Judge snapped. There was another click, and Shinji turned, to see a man in a black coat and a white frilled shirt. He had a top-hat with a flower, and a bell hung from his neck. He was a Westerner, with a smirk on his face.

"I stand for the accused," he said.

"The Young Man will stand," the Judge announced.

"I may sit," the Young Man said.

"Well, will you stand or sit?"

"Whichever you say, oh daddy, my daddy," the Young Man said.

"Is it the father or the son?"

"The baby of the daddy, ooohh my daddy," the Young Man said in a mocking tone. The entire exchange was a rapid patter, both members of the conversation seeming to speak a language only they understand. Shinji felt a fear, the bizarre setting and the bizarre participants eating at him. The Judge broke the exchange with a bang of the gavel. "Of what does the accused stand charged with?" he called.

"The defendant stands accused of refusing to wear his number," a Juror announced.

"How pleads the accused? Confess?" the Judge snapped.

"The accused don't plead, the accused don't want, dad," the Young Man snapped.

"Is the charge adequate, I mean will it stick?" the Judge asked.

"Stick's with a kick, daddy-o, that's what I heard," the Young Man retorted.

"Is that what you heard?" the Judge asked.

"That's what I saw."

"Saw when you were out?"

"Out, now I'm in."

"In like Flynn?"

"In and here."

"Here you are, but you went away."

"Out and about," the Young Man agreed.

"About time you got back," the Judge said helpfully.

"And here I am."

"There you are."

"There I am," the Young Man said mournfully.

"So, you're help."

"Hip, daddy, still."

"Does he confess?" the Judge asked.

"Is that the point?" the Young Man asked.

"Confess?"

"Considered."

"Confess!"

"Consigned."

"Confess!"

"Not the word," the Young Man sniffed.

"And the word, what's the word?" the Judge asked.

"The word on the street?" the Young Man asked.

"Yeah!" the Judge snapped enthusiastically.

"Street games, street talk?"

"You with it, are you still?"

"Still with it, still kicking," the Young Man agreed happily.

"So you're saying you're still hip?" the Judge asked.

"Hip bone…"

"Never mind the details."

"…knee bone…"

"All the bones are yours?"

"…leg bone, hand bone…"

"Are does the boy have something to offer?"

"…back…bone…"

From somewhere music played. "Ezekiel cracked them…_dry_ bones! Ezekiel cracked them…_dry_ bones! Ezekiel cracked them…_dry_ bones! And hear the Word of the Lord!" The Jury stood and began dancing. The Judge began clapping in time with the music, seemingly caught in a fit. Shinji held up his hands, feeling closed in and attacked. He looked around at the circus that had exploded at the music, and felt his gaze drawn to the Young Man. While everyone danced, he stood serene and smiling, looking at Shinji with a friendly gaze. He tipped his hat to the boy, and winked. It did nothing to calm Shinji's nerves, and he grabbed his head, fighting panic and losing badly.

"Them bones, them bones, them…_dry _bones! And hear the Word of the Lord!"

"Hip, hip!" the Judge snapped.

"Hip!" repeated the Jury. "Hip!" they snapped. "Hip, hip, hip, hip!" they began chanting, pounding the desks, a rising thunder that surrounded Shinji and closed him in, filling him with terror. It reached a sudden apex, and the crowd stood and yelled, "HOORAY!" before sitting silently again. Shinji fell to his knees, and covered his face, tired. He was tired of it, and he didn't want to see anymore.

"And hear the Word of the Lord," the Young Man said, and then all was silent.

* * *

After a long time, Shinji finally pulled his hands away from his face. He knelt on a green in a garish town, all pink and stucco structures with Greco-Roman sculptures. It felt kitsch, and ugly, and grossly artificial. Next to him was a fountain and a pond, the water curiously silent. He stared at it, willing it to make noise, but there was no bubbling, no current.

"Echo," he mumbled, and heard his own voice. He could still hear, and that seemed worse.

"Who is Number One?"

The sounds of the world suddenly came to him, and Shinji whirled. He was confronted by another Westerner, a blond man with a severe face in a black suit.

"What…I…I don't know."

"Who is Number One?" the man repeated, advancing. Shinji wanted to flee, but his feet felt wooden.

"Gendo Ikari," he said, reflexively.

"You are Number 6."

Shinji shook his head. "I'm Shinji. Shinji Ikari."

"You are Number 6," the man repeated.

"Stop calling me that," Shinji said, feeling trapped. The man crouched over him, and Shinji suddenly had the swimming sensation that he had not been this height a moment before. He looked at his hands, and saw them small, pudgy. He was standing in his five year old self, a toddler confronted by the giant before him.

"Are you numeral, animal, vegetable, mineral?" the man asked, "Pawn, king, pauper, prisoner? What's your purpose? What's your frequency? Do you have a smell that you listen to, or a flavor that you mutter in?"

"Go away. You're a crazy person, just…get away from me."

"Why do you speak in songs?" The clearly insane man stood and began circling the boy. "Why do you mutter in moonbeams?"

"Leave me alone," Shinji pleaded, crying now.

"Do you tempest in teacups? Do you dance under desktops? Are you that rare kind of enigmatic individual?"

"Stop talking! Stop it! Stop speaking to me!" Shinji screamed. The man stopped, leaned over once more. His gray eyes locked onto Shinji's.

"Why do you speak in English?"

Shinji blinked, his pleas dying on his lips before he could say them. He stood up…having been sitting cross legged…no, he was a five year old a moment ago, and now he was fourteen again. Was he fourteen the whole time? He glanced around. Nothing else had changed, but there were clouds in the sky. He looked up, to see that each cloud was a differently sized Rover, floating as lazy and silent as a giant jellyfish.

"You speak English," the man continued, "You dream in English. You think in English. Has it never occurred to you, my friend from Japan?" Shinji blinked, trying to remember. The signs from the street, the words he heard and spoke during the day…

"No, it's…German…" he mumbled. That wasn't right. Maybe it was Malaysian. Or…no, no, one street sign was clearly Cyrillic…or was it Tagalog? Esperanto? Swahili?

"I…I…uh…I…" Shinji began mumbling. He was saying the sound of 'I', as in 'aye, aye, captain.' The English definition of self. The English word. "I…I…I…I…" He seemed caught in a loop, and he felt his knees give way.

"You…you…me…me…I…I…" the man intoned, kneeling in front of Shinji. He was close, pressing. His eyes were hot, and his face filled with purpose.

"Who is Number One?"

"Stop."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"You are Number 6."

"No."

"You are Number 6."

"I am me, I am…Shinji…"

"You are Number 6."

"I am not a number!" Shinji pleaded.

"You are Number 6."

Shinji screamed, and the world broke apart, scattered on the winds of self.


	6. The Math of Man

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!"

The sound of something shattering filled Shinji's mind, and he breathed deep. He was in his bathroom, not a court room or a village. His palms were on the mirror, cracks radiating from his hands like spider webs, clearly seen in the dark. Little trickles of black began to flow towards the sink, and he felt a stinging sensation starting in the palm and rising to the elbow.

There was a crash in his bedroom, and Misato was at the bathroom entrance, still in pajamas. "Good God," she gasped, stepping into the bathroom and gingerly lifting Shinji's hands from the mirror. Bloody palm prints remained, and little cuts perforated his hand. "Shinji…" she whispered.

"I was asleep," he said, crying. "I was asleep, and then I was here…I don't know what happened. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry…I don't know…"

"Don't talk, it's okay," she said, walking him into the kitchen. "I'm sorry about your door. I heard you screaming, and you wouldn't answer it. I had to…" she mumbled, leading him past the wreckage of said door. It was hanging loose off of one hinge.

They ran his hands under the sink, and Misato fetched a first aid kit. "You won't need stitches," she said, examining each cut, gently drying the hands with gauze and bandaging them.

"I bled all over the floor," he said, feeling guilty. "I…I…"

She shook her head, giving him a quick but deep kiss on the forehead. It had the same affect as a breath on a candle flame, and much of Shinji's consternation and confusion fluttered away. He sagged. "Stop worrying about that," she said, "I'm just worried about you. What were you dreaming about?"

He closed his eyes, thinking back. "I can't remember," he mumbled. He hated to lie to Misato, but he didn't feel like telling the truth, either.

"That might be better. It must have been awful," she said. "You should probably stay home, tomorrow." He shook his head vehemently. She was surprised. "Okay, we'll talk about in the morning. Do you need something to help you sleep?" Shinji rocked, but he seemed very far away. Misato sighed, and walked him to her bed room. She tucked him in on one side, grabbed a blanket, and lay down on top of the sheets on the other side. "I'll be here the whole night," she promised. "If anything happens, I'll be right here. You can't have bad dreams when a friend is with you, right?"

Shinji said nothing. He lay silent, awake, well past when Misato's gentle snores filled the room. Her presence, her smell…it did have an affect of calming him. A vague half-memory of crawling into his mother's bed fluttered to him, and the two moments, now and then, merged in his mind. He couldn't remember his mother, but he could remember that, or the feeling of it. He sighed, and nestled into his pillow. The dream was still in his mind, the strangeness and the surreal pattern very much a real thing to him. He reflected on Misato coming to him, bandaging his hurts, being near him tonight. She was good. She was a good person. She was a true person. He smiled, fleetingly, and felt a weight return to his heart as he tried to fall asleep. It was about something Misato had said. Actually, what both Misato and him had said. The entire conversation.

Everything they had said that night was in English.

* * *

Gendo watched the tape. Twenty minutes of static, the beginning of which was his son squirming in bed, caught in the throes of some sort of dream, the next, 58 breaking down his bedroom door with her shoulder. He and Kozo had sat and watched the twenty minutes straight three times, in silence, waiting for some clue to appear in the blizzard of electronic noise. It had been dissected by specialists, the lines examined by experts. No cause and no reason for it.

"I believe it is 100," Kozo offered, but Gendo shook his head.

"She's the only one that's displayed a talent for that, to be sure," he said, "But this may be his doing." He tapped the monitor on the space over the boy, to clarify.

"How many locks has he broken, now?"

"Thirty percent. Not high enough to have a reaction like this. And what's more, that's what we know of. He may have more locks in his mind than we anticipated."

Gendo sighed. What did you do, Yui? His face quirked in a rare grin. It had been a secret between him and his wife what had happened to that little embryo in her womb. Had she had some secrets of her own? Of course she did, he accepted. He wouldn't have been so devoted to her if she had not had some way of bedeviling him, even from beyond the grave.

* * *

Shinji had decided, that day, to answer all of his questions with an asterisk, a colon, and a parenthesis. Each one, all of them. He found a strange comfort in the repetitive motion. He retreated into his mind, simply tapping the three keys over and over.

From the walk down the hill, his eyes had been open and his ears had been receiving. English. English. English. English. How he had never noticed it before was beyond him. Every sign was in Roman characters, every word flawless English, no trace of an accent and no hint of a region. Not British English, not American, or Australian.

Just English.

It was even more strange in that he had never learned English. His entire life, he had spoken Japanese. He never endeavored to learn any other languages, save for the smattering that came to him from time to time. Single words, little concepts. But the whole language…as he typed his false answers, he played his thoughts in his mind. He was thinking in English, reasoning in English. Had he always spoken English, and just thought he understood Japanese?

A strange drop seemed to fill his mind, and he glanced to the left at 100. She was typing her computer, detached and not really there. He looked at everyone else. The shimmer seemed to follow them. 100 was not there, but it didn't feel anyone else was either. No, they were there…it was just that he was leaving. He blinked. He looked at the keyboard.

The Roman characters remained Roman, but his mind began to see things in Arabic script. Not the keyboard, no, but…did he know Arabic? What about Farsi? He thought of a single Japanese term, fighting through the morass of linguistics that his mind had become, and seized it. "If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets," he mumbled. No one looked at him, but he heard a shuffle from 100's desk.

He had said the phrase in Japanese. He bit his cheek, and wandered in his mind to an English word. "Mister Thimble is a jerk and I hope he dies," he hissed. A few more people looked at him, but then went back to ignoring him.

"Number 6, is there a problem?" the teacher asked, detecting the rippling of heads from his section.

"No, everything is all right," he said, but he had been skipping through a few more languages when he said it. The mishmash that came out was a combination of French and Afrikaans. A slow rumble filled the classroom as every student turned and looked at Shinji.

707 was a desk ahead and to the right of Shinji. "Hey, 6," he whispered, "Are you okay."

"Yeah, I'm fine, don't worry about it," he hissed in Italian.

"What?"

"I am fine," he said, finding English again. "I'm sorry, I'm okay. Really." He held up his bandaged hands, "Just feeling a little ill."

"Do you need to be excused?" the teacher asked testily. Shinji shook his head, and returned to the laptop. The class fell back into silence, and he glanced at 100. Her eyes were boring into him.

He looked away, closing his eyes. How did he just perform that little feat? It seemed he had learned a lot of languages somewhere down the line. Had he always known them? He opened his eyes, staring at his hands, turning them upwards. He remembered the dream, the strange court room, the Judge, the Jury, the Young Man, the bones…

That blond man.

He stared at his fingertips, pondering finger bones, which connected to hand bones to wrist bones to arm bones up to elbow bones shoulder bones neck bones patterned by their twins to create symmetry symmetry creates alignment conducive to the pattern pertained in perfect equation to numbers that defined laws defined gravity gravity was down the head was up from which one deduced the causality of chaos to order order to chaos and I is not a number—

Shinji kicked out of his desk with an audible grunt, his forehead beaded with sweat as he shook the strange fit that had seized him. He rushed out of the classroom, feeling sick, as eyes followed him in confusion and silence.

* * *

He stood in the bathroom, his head under the faucet tap of one of the sinks. Cold water seeped into his hair, and his illness passed. His palms itched where they had been cut, but he fought the urge to scratch them. He simply stood, letting the water soak his hair, his scalp, his face. After a minute, he turned off the faucet, and stood up. He looked in the mirror, and saw 100 was behind him.

Strangely, he didn't flinch. It was as if something had told him she would be there.

"You have adopted erratic behaviors," she said. "This concerns me."

He said nothing, and leaned over the sink. He stared at his face in the mirror, his eyes drifting deeper into the skin, down to pores, past the molecules. He snapped his eyes shut. "I can't…stop…" he mumbled, sagging over his arms on the counter. He didn't care why he was speaking English. He didn't care that he was unable to stop thinking, processing, rehashing, recalculating. He was done. Finished. "No more."

100 looked at him, blank. He felt her eyes boring into the back of his head, and he straightened and gazed at her. "Everything is too clear," he mumbled. She cocked her head, like a dog hearing a whistle, and then placed a hand on the counter. The world seemed to pulse, and Shinji felt his breath stolen from him. And yet…

He felt calm. Cool. Better.

"Do you know of secret integers?"

"What…no…I…is that like a hidden integer?" He seemed to recall hearing that term before, and that sounded right.

"A hidden integer is an unknown quantity, but one that can be determined. Examine, if you will, the equation of X divided by Y to equal 0." She looked at the mirror, and, as though written in steam, the equation X/Y=0 fluttered across the glass. Shinji stared, curious, but not in wonder. It was a testament, he thought, to the world he had found himself in that this was the most normal thing he had encountered during the day.

"X and Y are existent values, each equivalent to the integer of 0 when the former is divided by the latter."

"Isn't that…impossible? Or…well, one has to be zero, right…?"

"You are missing the point of the analogy," 100 said testily, and Shinji snapped his mouth shut. "The point is that X is an integer, Y is an integer, but their form and function is hidden."

"That's…a secret integer, right?"

"No, it is not. You will find that precise terminology in mathematics exists for a reason," she snapped, and the equation disappeared. She looked at the glass, and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 appeared in sequence.

"Each is an integer," she said quietly, "and they are known to you, correct?"

"Yes."

"Are there any numbers here that you do not see?"

Shinji squinted. "Um…that's all the numbers I know, unless you mean higher values, like 22 or 10 or something." 100 nodded, seemingly in approval.

"You are trying to see what is not written here, and I commend you for that. It is the wrong path, but at least you stepped onto it. Look again." Shinji felt sweat bead on his head, and he stared at the numbers.

"Um…I don't know. It's all there, all the numbers I know."

"Of course. That is all that you know." 100 placed a hand on his shoulder, and he felt a _pressing_, as though the world was in flux. "What integers are there that you do not see?"

"Ah…I don't understand. Please explain what you mean," he pleaded.

"What is between 1 and 2? Or between 5 and 6?"

"Ah…1 .5? 5.9?"

"Decimals, fractions and parts of numbers, yes," she agreed. "Or, are they not numbers in their own right?" Shinji felt a strange tremor pass through him, and a moment of…comprehension seemed to grip him.

Finger bone knee bone thigh bone skull bone…all little bones pondered up into one part, one _sum._

"A secret integer is a number we don't know about yet," he mumbled, "Not because it's hidden…but…it doesn't exist."

The world pulsed, and Shinji sagged. "You will come home with me today," she said. "And we will talk. You will make me ratatouille," she said, "I was unable to enjoy it the last time."

The bathroom door opened, and a boy entered, and stopped, confused. "Eh…I'm…sorry?" he asked, unsure if that was the proper response for walking in on a boy and a girl in the men's room.

"I am leaving," she said to the boy, brushing past him. Shinji stayed, staring at the mirror. It was blank, again, but the numbers had been burned inside his head.

* * *

He was halfway back to the class room when he was called to the Principal's office over the loudspeaker. He headed there dutifully, was admitted, and found Number 2 seated behind the desk, wearing academic robes and a graduate's square cap. The affect seemed comical, but Shinji did not smile. The memory of the court room came to him. Measured insanity. Deliberate madness.

I will do this funny thing, but you dare not laugh at me.

"Number 6, I wish to inform you that we have been pleased with some of your progress," he said, "But not all of it. Your test scores are well, but your behavior needs some curbs in place."

"Isn't that what Rover is for?" Shinji asked. He was wondering if this had to do with his little Rosetta Stone performance in the class room, but said nothing.

"Rover does what Rover does," Number 2 said smiling, and Shinji snorted at the non-answer. "No, I am more concerned about this attention that 100 has been giving you. I don't feel it's healthy."

"We test together. Is it not right that we be friends as well?" he asked, curious. Not that the relationship he had with the girl could be called _friendly_, but he wouldn't let Number 2 know that.

"I would very much like for you to have friends here," the man agreed, "Because we all need friends in this world. I just worry about her. She's not normal, as you may have noticed." He leaned forward, as if to give a secret. "She's not right in the head. I fear for your safety. She might plan to do you harm of a physical or mental nature. Just be careful, you know. Take what she says with a grain of salt." He leaned back. "We just want you to be safe, is all. We care about you. We are your family, you could say."

When school ended, Shinji had enough time to close his laptop when 100 had grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the classroom. They left the building, and Rover was there, as usual, growling at him and 100. As they marched up the hill, the sphere followed. It occurred to Shinji that it wasn't attacking him because of 100. Was it because 100 was off-limits to Rover? Or…?

He looked at the girl, and back at the sphere. Was…she _preventing_ Rover from attacking in a more intrinsic way than her presence? Could she control the thing? Or make it afraid? He pondered that as they marched past his house, past two more…and she led them down to the doorway of a bungalow three houses down from his. He sputtered: she had been on his street all this time, and he had not known it.

They entered the house, and Shinji found a curious dread. Who were her parents, or guardian? What would they be like? Would they ask him the intentions he had regarding their daughter?

Did he have intentions? Looking at his wrist, the way she gripped it, the thought flashed into his mind…did possessions have the right to intentions? He shook the questions from his mind and glanced around. It was a perfect copy of his own bungalow, save that it was empty. There was no furniture, no personal items, nothing. She marched him to the kitchen, where there was a table with one chair.

"You will make the ratatouille now," she announced, and sat down. Shinji shrugged, and went to the fridge. It was largely empty, save for yogurt and grocery bags with precisely enough ingredients to make a small stew. "The vegetables are washed," she said, "And there are enough to make what should be an adequate meal for two."

"Um…do you want me to eat with you?" Shinji asked. He had assumed, of course, but since there was one chair, and he found making assumptions with 100 lead to strange pathways.

"Of course," she said, looking at him like he was an idiot. He glanced at her, then the table, then back. She stared at him, and blinked. "I will retrieve a chair from my bed room. You will make the ratatouille now."

"Thank you," Shinji said with a smile. He eyed what he had, once it was set out on the counter. It wasn't the same vegetables that he had worked with, so he was uncertain what Rei had read or found when picking out her choice for the evening, but food was something Shinji could work around. He improvised well enough, and in twenty minutes he had a nice stew bubbling on the stove, the chopped vegetables simmering together well. 100 continued to sit at the table, impassive and silent. Shinji decided that, since all he was doing was stirring the pot, he might as well risk conversation.

"So, where are your parents?"

"I do not have parents."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Why?" The question was an adequate one. He didn't know why he felt sorry she didn't have parents.

"A guardian?" he asked, changing the subject.

"No." He turned, in surprise.

"Wh…you live here alone?"

"Of course. Is that not evident?" Shinji didn't know how to answer that. He looked towards the back of the house, then at the girl, and felt the wind rush out of him. He changed the subject, feeling queasy trying to process her answer.

"Do you…have a name? I asked yesterday, and you didn't answer."

She looked straight ahead, taking her gaze away from Shinji. "No." She said it with a finality.

"That's not right," he thought, pondering it. "Okay…well, let's give you a name." She popped her head around.

"I do not need one. I am 100."

"That's a number, not a name," he said, scratching his cheek.

"What's the purpose of a name? It is not a value," she said dismissively.

"Well, yeah it is. It's a hidden value." The conversation earlier popped into his mind, and he smiled. "You know…X might be 13 or it might be 133. You never know, and that's the point."

"Why would you hide your value?" she asked, confused.

"You're not hiding it, you're…what's more interesting to you, a solved equation or an unknown quantity?" She blinked, and opened her mouth to say something. Then stopped. The term 'interesting' was vague to her, but the mania that gripped her when working through numbers…it was something she sought, something she pursued.

"I still do not understand, but I feel more comfortable with the notion," she said.

"Okay. Well, let's see…a good name for you…" Strange thoughts flickered in his mind, and his dream came back to him. He looked at her, the questions posed to him now being posed to her. Do you tempest in teacups? Dance under desktops? Are you that rare kind of enigmatic individual?

He laughed, and she snapped her eyes to him, confused. "You are a rare kind of enigmatic individual," he said, "That describes you perfectly. Rare, enigmatic, and definitely individual. R-E-I. How about Rei?"

She blinked, looking down. "I do not know…if I like it."

"But it fits you! Rei! Say it, just try it out!"

She scrunched her face up. "Rei," she mumbled. "Rei. Reee-aay. Reii-uh." She went through patterns, variations, lilts, and shuffles. Her lips quirked at the edges, but her face remained bland. "I will change my assessment. I do not like it, but I am comfortable with it."

"Okay. So, when we're togehter…I'll be Shinji, you'll be Rei. Shinji and Rei."

"Shinji…and Rei…" she said. "Rei…and Shinji…I can accept this."


	7. NoRoom Interlude

"She took him to her house today," Kozo said. "We haven't been able to keep that building on the observation grid ever since she moved in there. You know what that means? Unobserved contact." He and Gendo were once again in the No-Room, a stack of reports and files on the desk between them. Kozo was agitated, and Gendo was amused.

"Oh, Kozo, I didn't know you were such a moral man," Gendo chided. "Imagine, the children unobserved."

"She has burned out two sets of cameras when speaking to him, pushed Rover to fits of near hysteria, and now _he_ seems to be doing the same thing," Kozo hissed. "He blocked out a camera set while sleeping. He was practically speaking in tongues in class the next day."

"And no one picked up on it?" Kozo shook his head, and Gendo chuckled in amusement. The nature of language was a simple matter of adjustment and replacement, one of the first things done before anyone even got to the Island. The ability to twist and refine, to make a person think in one form over the other, was actually quite simple. The purpose, of course, was to begin the process of isolation. No one on the Island spoke English as a first language, and simple mimetic cycles could be introduced to change that. In truth, it could be any language, and those cycles contained a breadth of human lingua.

It was subtle, and unknown, and often got the ball rolling on a person's own indoctrination. That was the key of the Island, of course. You couldn't force a person to do something, but a person could convince themselves of anything. Why subvert a past and risk it reemerging when a person who, upon converting _themselves_, could do it so much quicker?

Kozo was understandably worried. By stumbling upon the cycle in his brain, Shinji had discovered something that could undo a lot of their work. He didn't seem to be addressing it, however, which was good. So much had happened to him, he seemed to have chalked it up as just one more strange item on the Island.

Gendo seemed unconcerned, either way. "If he pursues it, will deal with it then. I agree we should watch that, as a mass realization of that nature could collapse the structure we built. I doubt he will push the issue, however. In the meantime, I have a variable to distract him and shake things up."

"I am already shaken up," he grumbled. "I know very well that telling him to avoid her is pushing them closer together. I can't see why we want that."

"Will you stop trying to bring the conversation back to that? The issue is done. Look at this one," Gendo insisted, handing him a file. Kozo examined it.

"Good lord. She's…" Kozo looked up from the file. "Is this accurate?"

"She was part of a pilot program attempting to produce similar results in a more social environment," Gendo explained. "Like ours, but with less control measures. Rather than trying to build a society to create results, they simply isolated the candidates within actual social settings with key restraints, manufactured psychological response and synapses, all that. Less expensive, but less dramatic results."

"Until now," Kozo mumbled. Gendo shrugged. "When we inherited this Island," he said, "The experiment had already been in progress for eighty years. Our superiors acknowledge that that program," he said, jabbing a finger at the folder, "Would not have even started if it weren't for the results of the Island."

"What of the other candidates?" Kozo asked.

"Useless, mostly. Not entirely, of course. We see some potential for politicians, business leaders, the like. Individuals we can control."

"Assuming we…need them," Kozo ventured.

"Assuming. We may achieve the critical results in this lifetime, and we may not. We are in this for the long game, Kozo," Gendo reminded. The man nodded, and looked at the results. He squinted.

"I don't like it. I mean, yes, she managed to achieve a 45% break on the locks in place largely on her own. Everything here indicates she is an individual, however, a fierce one. Look at this, narcissism, self-importance…'severe egotistical dementia.' What does that mean, is that even an actual psychological condition?" He slid the file back across the table. "They're making up terms to describe her."

Gendo rolled his eyes, and said, "I believe that phrase was written in exasperation. She's apparently a handful. Now: why do I beat you at chess?"

"Because you're a bastard."

"Well, yes, but _besides_ that." Kozo sighed, and chewed the inside of his lip.

"Because you see the moves that aren't being made. You see the…game under the game. Which is why you are playing fifty games at once, this is _bad _idea!" Kozo hissed, trailing from one subject to the next in a fit of exasperation. He had found that, under the playful and manipulative facade of Number 2, his own stress was beginning to catch up with him. When he dropped one identity, the realities of Kozo became harder to manage.

"We've had that discussion, it is over. Now, _look_," Gendo said, fiercely. "This girl has made it clear to everyone that she meets that she is the alpha of a given situation. Her superiority is measured in response to the presence of others. She sees herself…"

Kozo blinked, the realization that Gendo had been trying to lead him to dawning. "Wait. I see." He waved his friend off. "She is fragile. Ah…of course." He looked at the psychological profile again. "And smarter than those who assessed her. She thinks she realizes it, but she doesn't. She's actually been hiding how fragile she is." He nodded, and slapped his knee. "You are a bastard, Gendo," he laughed. "You're placing her into an environment where she will willingly subvert her own individual will, because she will treat it as a competition. She will try to 'win' to prove she's superior, but the only 'victory' is by keeping to her number."

"You're getter quicker on the uptake," Gendo smiled. "Now, here's one for you: I'm going to assign this child to the home of 58 and 6. What do you think of that?"

Kozo leaned back, thoughtful. "Well…hmm. That's a risk. A big one. She _might_ bludgeon the boy into accepting his role on the Island, but more likely…" he chewed his lip. "She's more likely to fall into his frame of thinking."

"It wouldn't be a tragedy if she did," Gendo said. "We can still reap the results of whatever that would produce."

Kozo grumbled. "You treat this like jazz. I can't keep up with the improvisations you practice."

"Try to. She needs competition to thrive, and I feel that the boy will provide her the drive she needs. Whether she retains her _name_ or accepts her _number_ is irrelevant."

"So long as she breaks the locks," Kozo said, "As well as him. And for that…you need stress."

"Carefully induced and measurable chaos," Gendo admitted.

"What about 100? Where does she fit into this?" Kozo asked.

"We have driven 6 and 100 together," Gendo explained. "As we know, the tripod is the most unstable of arrangements, especially among humans. This is less a psychological calculation, more of a human one. We have one boy, two girls. Forcing them together, in an arrangement that is designed to produce chaos."

"And stress, and then we shall see what the test results provide." Kozo nodded. And then winced. "This tripod might stand. Or it might fall."

"If it falls in a direction of benefit, all the better," Gendo said.

Kozo laughed. "Yes, but it might fall on _you_!"

Gendo shrugged. "The long game, Kozo. Believe it or not, I do know my place in the world. Whether I see the end or not means nothing. It only the end that matters."

Kozo sighed. That meant _he_ was as well, and though he had accepted it, that didn't mean he had to like it. Human nature was like that. "All right. Well, what's next? When does this girl get here?"

"Tomorrow. She even has a number," Gendo said, writing the numeral on the folder and sliding it to Kozo. The man looked at, and grinned. Then laughed.

"Oh," he said, "She'll _love_ that."


	8. Uncertainty Principle

That night, Shinji had a dream about a penguin. It drank beer, wore a tri-corner hat, and told Shinji that together, they would be the greatest pirates that the world had ever seen. They were off to find the Treasure of Holy Mackerel, and had to defeat scores of His Majesty's Royal Pantaloons in order to do so. Misato was there. She had an eye patch, a great coat, and wore a bikini top under that. "I'm a pirate!" she declared, while making Number 2 walk the plank.

And Shinji was happy, because it was a normal dream.

* * *

When he woke up, he looked over to see 100, who they had decided would be named Rei in private, standing over his bed in her school uniform. He blinked, wondering if he was still dreaming. He checked the clock. It was six. He looked back. She was still there.

"The door to you bed room is broken," she said, "And there is blood on the floor. The mirror in your bath room needs to be replaced."

"Misa…58…said that the work order…would be filled today," Shinji said. He sat up. Rei said nothing, and he felt uncomfortable.

"I am being taken for individual tests today," she said, "And I will return to the school after lunch. It seems that you have been assigned for tests in the afternoon, so we may not see each other today."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that," he said, folding his hands in his lap.

"I liked the ratatouille, though you used too much salt," she said.

"I…won't. Next time," he said.

She said nothing, and he coughed. He waited, and she continued to stare at him. "I would like to try eggplant parmigiana next." She said. "You will make that here tonight."

"…I don't think I have the…ingredients for that."

"I have informed 58. She agreed to fetch the ingredients today."

"When…" He blinked. "When did you inform her?"

"Prior to informing you."

His left eyelid twitched, and his right hand trembled. "And she said yes?"

"She agreed, but I believe she was still asleep when doing so. I left a note on her alarm clock and her door to clarify the point."

"Oh…that's…that's really good thinking," he agreed. It was the best thing he could say.

"I will go now. Be seeing you." She stated. And then she turned, and left. A moment later, he heard the front door open, and close. He sat in his bed until seven, when Misato's alarm rang. After ten or fifteen minutes, Misato entered his bedroom with two pieces of paper.

"What is this?"

"R—100 came by to say she was eating dinner here. My treat. She needs you to get the ingredients," he said meekly.

"When did you two decide this?" she said, irritated. Her hair was poofed up on one side, and she was still trying to wake up.

"I think she did last night, but she…told me about an hour or so ago."

"An…hour...ago…" Misato was now completely awake. "I thought I was dreaming. Di…" She looked at him, then the notes. "Did she come into our bedrooms to tell us that?" she asked, in shock.

"At least it was just to talk," Shinji offered, a weak excuse.

* * *

As he walked to school that day, had stopped and looked into the wood line. At the edge, he saw a fox, tearing at the carcass of a small rabbit. He had seen foxes and other animals scurrying about the Island, but none of them had indicated to him anything about their location in the world. They were all imported fauna, he decided, and all it did was confuse him. Still, as he stared, he felt that loose feeling grip him again, of observing patterns and lines, from the haphazard mess of the dead rabbit to the colors of the fox, to the green of the woods behind him.

He thought about what Rei had told him, about secret integers. Why had she told him that? And what purpose would secret numbers have? He looked at the mess of the situation in front of him. The fox, the rabbit, the wood. That part of Shinji that had become…something else…noted that within the disorder, there was a specific arrangement of variables defined by math. The plants were not disorganized, but patterned on the defined set of their needs, from the shape of the leaves down to their chlorophyll. The fox consumed the dead animal to provide fuel for its existence, the rabbit, deceased to increase the efficiency of the rabbit population as a whole. It ate the plants, the fox at the rabbit, the fox died, and the plants consumed the fox through the earth. It was ordered, and arranged.

Or was it? Shinji felt the 6 on his chest like a weight. He glanced down at it. They numbered people here, creating a system, artificial but orderly. It wasn't as ordered as they attempted, however. It couldn't be. People were not numbers, they were too unpredictable. You could force a person to behave in a specific pattern, but that didn't mean the pattern was true. Was that the purpose? He thought again to secret integers. If math was defined by the known integers, even at its most obscure, it was still a known quantity, defined and limited. Like the Island, the numbers. The system. What would happen…? Shinji stared hard at the fox, tearing into the rabbit. What would happen if more was introduced, and the system upended?

The fox stopped, staring at him, it's muzzle caked with blood. "Chaos," it whispered, and disappeared into the bush.

* * *

When Shinji entered the classroom, he found the normal order had been momentarily dispelled as students crowded around a desk that was behind Rei's. It had been one of the empty ones, which were generally clustered on Rei's side. It made sense, as no one felt comfortable sitting next to 100. He glanced around. Unless she was in the crowd, 701 was not here yet. No one was in their seats.

He pushed through the chattering group, and sat down at his desk. His curiosity was strongly tampered by his encounter with the fox, which he sadly realized was not the strangest thing he had seen while here. The curious warning of the animal had done as much to affect him as Rei writing in the mirror, or the revelations of his surreal dreams, or his own realization at the nature of language in whatever this place was. He had decided he was going insane, and the best way to combat it was to accept it with grace.

As if from a hidden signal, the students between him and his desk evaporated, and 713 said, "Oh, he's here now! Check it out, 6! New student's here."

Shinji was about to say something about 701 and her stance on ogling new students as he turned around, and saw her standing over the student in question. He felt a mask of confusion settle on his face, matching the mood he felt, and looked down. Seated in the chair was a beautiful girl, her arms crossed and an expression of smug acceptance on her face. He could see why she had drawn a crowd.

Her hair was red. Orange, really, but it was…well, everything about her was striking. It was silky and fine, well brushed and well groomed. Her face was very pretty, and her eyes very blue. Physically, she was one of the most unique, most striking, most attractive people he had ever met. She had that unconscious sense of being 'in charge' about her, the kind of attitude that made people gravitate in her direction without knowing why. Shinji felt the pull, as well, but something inside seemed to stamp a foot.

_And hear the Word of the Lord_! The Young Man skipped through his mind for just a moment, and the whisper of the fox followed. Chaos.

"Hey, 6!" 701 said, "We have another low number. Our class must be doing well to keep getting you guys assigned here!"

"A low number?" he asked, and squinted at the girl. She looked at him with bemusement, and then up at 701.

"_That's_ Number 6?" she said. "I'm under him? How on earth did a dweeb like that get assigned ahead of me?" He felt his eyes stray to her chest, feeling a brush at looking at _that_ feminine feature…

Number 7. A word and warning dropped into his mind. Chaos.

"He goes to take tests with 100," 707 said defensively, his hand resting protectively on Shinji's shoulder. They hadn't been the best of friends, more acquaintances, but he knew him more than 7, and that meant he had more invested in Shinji than her.

"Where is she now?" the girl sniffed.

"Testing," Shinji muttered.

"Now? Not this afternoon?" She suddenly seemed irked. "So she gets to be tested individually, and I have to test with you. That's so stupid…" A look of disgust came on her face. "We're important numbers. Why are we being tested together, and she's going solo? Where's the logic in that?"

Shinji narrowed his eyes. What exactly did she think this place was? She seemed to have some sort of preconceived concept of the Island. "Who _are_ you?" he asked in a sharp tone, his confusion taking hold. Several eyes stared at him in surprise, and she glared. She began a retort, but the teacher entered the class room, and it died on her lips.

* * *

At lunch, Rei returned. Shinji was eating by himself at a table outside, if what he was doing could be called eating. Mostly, it was picking food, organizing it, or throwing it on the ground. He was too agitated to eat.

He looked up, and saw Rei seated across from him. He glanced around, saw no one nearby. "You will call me Rei for now," she said, as though to answer a question. "You are Shinji."

"We have a new student here," he said.

"I have heard. She is Number 7."

"She's kind of strange," he said, "And she's mad at me."

"What did you do?"

"Have this number," he said, thumbing the 6. "And a fox talked to me today. Just thought I'd mention that."

"What did it say?" Rei asked.

Shinji shook his head. "A fox…_talked_…today. It said a word. As in speaking. That…" he raised his hands. "That doesn't…anything? Anything at all?"

"If it said something, it must have been important for it to say," Rei said. "And clearly you thought that you heard it speak. What did it say?" It took Shinji a moment to process the words, and a moment more to realize that he had no argument for that logic.

"Chaos," he said. Her eyes widened, an almost delicious look of eagerness under the surface. "What does that…mean to you?" he asked, slightly afraid. Rei leaned forward, almost predatory.

"We exist in three planes," she said. "There is an X plane, a Y plane and a Z plane. What is that to you?"

"Uh…" Shinji closed his eyes, feeling that _part _of him answer. "Three dimensions through which we move."

"Is there a fourth dimension?"

"Time." Shinji glanced up, to see Number 7 glowering over them. "Though that is an inaccurate term. It is hardly a spatial dimension or physical dimension, and loosely defined in those concepts. The temporal dimension fits, though, in order measure physical change on a one-way path, forward and constant." She sniffed. "You must be 100."

"I am Rei."

Shinji turned and stared at Rei, caught off guard by the frankness of that statement. She was still leaning forward, that air of _pressing_ around her. The stance was…possessive. Of him. He felt a sudden unease. "He is Shinji," she said. "Those are names and not numbers. Do _you_ have a name?" The tone was bland, but Shinji could have sworn there was a sneer in that 'you.' Was…

Was Rei _jealous_? It was a side of her that was so different and so suddenly revealed that it scared him for a moment. The girl, who did not know Rei and thus failed to read the change in temperament, made a face. "We are assigned numbers," she snapped, "To gauge our value in this environment. Names are not the purpose of this test. But if you _must_ know," she hissed, feeling a sense of competitive need to place the girl under foot, "My name is Asuka. And that's all you need to know."

Rei's eyes trembled, and something very much like hate passed through her look. "You are interrupting," she snapped.

"Time," Shinji said, pulling the conversation back. "Is that what you meant by a fourth dimension?"

"She is still here, and I do not like talking when she is here," Rei said, "Her presence is obtrusive and unpleasant."

"My presence is just fine," the girl named Asuka and numbered 7 snapped, "I have a fantastic presence. People flock to my presence. I don't see anyone flocking to yours!"

"What do you think your doing?" Shinji asked, feeling a little frantic. The girl sputtered, caught off guard by the verbal trap she had sprung on herself. "Just stop talking for a moment. Rei, I don't care if she's here. What's this about time?"

Rei stared at Asuka, her lip curling. Asuka glared back. Shinji felt that if the gaze got anymore heated, he would suffer burns as a result. Asuka snapped, "I'm not leaving," just to spite the girl. Rei turned her attention back to Shinji, pointedly ignoring the girl.

"Space-time," she said, "Is one way to view the concept of time as a dimension quantifiable and manageable. Three dimensions become four. Four could become seven. Seven could be fourteen."

"Then there is the Krull dimension, the Hausdorff dimension, the Lebesgue covering dimension and inductive dimension," Asuka listed, bored. "This is so basic."

"Shut up, she's talking about physics, not math!" Shinji snapped. It was a wild and angry outburst, one that made Rei lean back and Asuka gasp. For a moment, it was as though Shinji had become something else entirely. The fury had come and gone so rapidly that it left him bewildered. Then…what he had said…

"What, how did I know those are math terms?" he asked. He turned to Rei, surprised, "How did I know you're talking about physics? Oh, God, how did I know there's a _difference_?" He laid his head on the table, suddenly tired. Asuka suddenly looked uncomfortable, as if she had witnessed something unclean. She had locked eyes with Shinji, and what she had seen was…words were inadequate.

Rei began speaking again, breaking the mood. "Math and physics speak languages that merge and dilute. I speak of dimensions, and these can be understood in numbers as well as presence. Shinji, I spoke of secret integers yesterday. Why would we need more numbers than what we have?"

"I was…thinking about that today," he said, "When the fox spoke."

"What fox?" Asuka asked.

"The math that we have is inadequate to understand those underlying dimensions," she explained. "It describes the table, the hands, the food, the air between you and me and the molecules within our flesh. Is it capable of describing more? That which we can and cannot perceive?" she asked.

"You're talking about string theory," Asuka said, forgetting her anger at Rei, the unease from Shinji, or even the stupid reference to the fox. She was interested now.

Rei hissed, irritated at the interruption. "Yes, but _no_. That is too simple a term. There is other theories that expound upon that."

"Like super-string theory?"

"Or M-theory, yes, but you are thinking in terms too limited to the discussion at hand!" Rei snapped.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Shinji hissed, his head beginning to hurt. The girls glanced at him, the line of conversation broken. "What does that have to do with me? Or you?" He pointed at Rei. "Or you?" he pointed at Asuka. She blinked. "Really, who _are _you, anyway?" he snapped, his earlier confusion coming back.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she said, offended without knowing why, but a strange realization came to Shinji.

"Never mind, I just…Rei, why secret integers? Who told you this? Did you come up with that theory?"

Rei opened her mouth to speak, and a block came on her. She suddenly looked lost, and folded her hands. The small finger on one was trembling. "That would be telling," she whispered.

Shinji squinted, a sense of _knowing_ eating at him. "Asuka—"

"Number 7," she corrected.

"Whatever, why do you know about this stuff?"

"If you _must_ know," she said with a huff that implied irritation, but clearly implied she loved explaining it, "I have a degree in advanced mathematics from—"

"A college degree?" Shinji asked.

"Of course," she said, truly irritated at being cut off. He looked at Rei, who stared into his eyes, imploring but not saying anything. Humans are numbers, defined as integers, but she was tutoring him on the theory of…secret integers…

Chaos. The sense of knowing was gone, and everything plunged out from under him. He was Shinji again, confused and lost. Rei seemed to detect the splash, and her shoulders visibly dropped, disappointed. He had been close to seeing the explanation, and the moment had passed.

Asuka glanced between the two of them, feeling the connection of failure and unable to interpret it. "What fox!" she snapped, in irritation.

* * *

At the end of lunch, Shinji and Asuka were pulled from school and placed in a sedan, to be driven off for testing. Asuka was clearly interested in continuing the discussion, but a curious look and sharp gesture from Shinji ended it. He felt comfortable discussing this stuff in Rei's presence, but not outside of it. He felt that somehow, Rei was able to prevent their conversations from being heard, and the powers that be were reluctant to interfere. Away from her, there could be problems that would develop from that kind of talk.

The ride was a silent one until Asuka broke the fugue. "Have you heard about kosho?" Shinji blinked.

"What?"

"Kosho. It's a sport they play here."

"I've…yeah. 58 talked about it when I came here."

"Have you played it?" she asked.

"No."

"707 mentioned it," she said, "Like he was trying to impress me, but I think he was more interested in making 701 pay attention to him. It's clear that there's a connection between those two."

"What about kosho?" he asked, trying to bring her attention back from matchmaking.

"It's a sport, obviously. You play it in a pool, but the point is not to fall in. It's like this," she turned in the seat, suddenly eager to explain. Shinji felt himself blush, looking at this excited girl who had removed the wall of superiority. "You have a big pool, with walls around the edge. In the center are platforms, like trampolines. You bounce from platform to platform, and you have an opponent. The goal is to knock the opponent into the pool. You can do it with fists, or swords, or batons, whatever. It sounds really neat. Let's play it."

"Wh…wait, us?" He glanced around the car, to make sure there wasn't another passenger she could be talking to. "You and me?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe you should play it with 707…he's more fam—"

"I don't _want_ to play it with 707, I _want_ to play it with you," she said, crossing her arms. "How about tonight?"

"I'm…making dinner for at my house tonight for…Rei and 58," he said weakly.

"Oh," she said, looking away. The word was quiet, but hurt.

"…but…but we can do it tomorrow after school!" he stammered, knowing, just _knowing_, as the words were starting, that he was an idiot. A perfect dunce, who had fallen into the trap built by that perfect look of indifference, that carefully pitched note of hurt.

"Excellent!" she said, bright and happy. "I'll meet you after school. We'll walk to the sport center! It'll be great!" The jaws were shut, the trap was sprung. There was no retreat now.

* * *

Kozo sat with Gendo, shaking his head. "He went from 30 percent to 58 percent of his locks opened. Stunning. Simply stunning."

"The girl?"

"Which one?"

"Both."

"100's results lead us to believe that she is still holding at 80 percent," he admitted, "but once she hit 72…thats as clear as we can get."

Gendo nodded. He had the distinct feeling 100 was either fudging the test scores, or the equipment was simply inadequate to deal with her level at this point. Kozo continued: "Number 7 went to 52%, which is a jump but within what could be considered a normal rise, considering her development and the stress you intended to introduce."

"How was their dinner?" Gendo asked, curious.

"58 talked the whole time, Number 6 stirred his food, and Number 100 and Number 7 glared at each other. When 100 realized that 7 was going to be living with 58, I saw more emotional reaction from that girl than I had observed in the last fourteen years," Kozo muttered. "I almost thought she was going to stab Number 7 with her fork."

Gendo nodded. He made a note to adjust the tests. It would be time to move past the chairs, and on to other things. "Good. This is good. I am curious to see what results this will produce, so let's assign 100 to the next phase, full gamut. Keep her isolated from the other two for awhile, let her stew a bit." Kozo scribbled something on a notepad. Gendo waited for him to finish, and then asked, "What affect has this had on 7?"

"Nothing during the day that we know of. Not like Number 6, but…" He scanned a page on the file. "We have a splice of video footage to observe. When she was looking in the mirror before she went to bed, she had what was described as a 'state.' Clocked out for eight minutes and forty second while brushing her teeth, then switched back on like nothing had happened. And while she's sleeping, she talks."

"A lot of people talk in their sleep."

"Yes, but not like this." Kendo shuffled through a folder. "One moment she's listing mathematical equations concerning the movement of mass within a vacuum, the next she's reciting Vergil's cantos. Oh, my favorite."

Kozo handed the transcript to Gendo. "The entire play of _Antigone_, with different voices for each character and stage directions included. Apparently, she is unable produce more than one voice when speaking as the Chorus, but she made a strong effort. We should be glad that 58 is a heavy sleeper. This is new behavior. It started as soon as she entered that house, and has not been observed in her past before until now. It's only been a day, but I feel it's safe to say that your 'stress' theory is yielding results."

Gendo nodded, scanning the list. A long line of mental flotsam and jetsam was charted on the page, including a Bob Dylan song, a lecture on the nervous system of frogs, and a conversation with her dead mother. "There," he said, tapping that item, "As I suspected."

"Suspected what?"

"A theory, that has been proved correct. Good night, Kozo." The man raised his hands in irritation, shrugged, and left. Gendo, left alone, allowed his mind to wander and collect information. It was clear the girl's image stemmed from a desire to prove herself to a mother who had passed on. That was good information to have, a leash if necessary. Looking at that little exchange, though, only enhanced Gendo's certainty his wife had kept things from him.

The girl was, for all intents and purposes, an orphan. There was no record in the files at all about her parentage, as that was a closely guarded secret, even from Gendo. His superiors had made a point of that, and he suspected they were preparing to tighten his walls a bit. Kozo was right; you couldn't play that many people without someone noticing. They had noticed, and this was their trump card, by virtue of the wife.

Number 7 would not have been displaying these abilities unless her mother had a connection to Yui Ikari. He had suspected it from the moment he saw her scores, and looking at the transcript…

There was no proof in the words, but he felt as certain. This was a trump card being played. He smiled, amused. Yes, it was a trump card by his handlers. He mentally added it to his own deck, thanking them for their unwitting gift.


	9. Kosho

Shinji slept fitfully that night, unnerved by the dinner, the sudden presence of Number 7/Asuka in his life, and the fact that he heard her at odd times through the walls. He couldn't make out her words, but she was very exuberant in saying them, and it made sleeping difficult. At times, he wanted to go to her bedroom to find out why she was causing such a ruckus, but he fought the urge down. He didn't want to risk finding her awake, and he didn't care to talk to her. The arrival she had brought had changed the dimensions of the house, and it had gone back to Number 6 and Number 58 for Misato and himself. It felt like she had robbed something from him, and, admittedly, he resented her for it.

And then there was kosho. The possibility of the activity happening tomorrow was as certain as a condemned man waiting for the noose. He knew she would not have forgotten it, and this was confirmed in the morning when she poked her head through the door and said, "Don't forget our date!"

Why did she have to call it a date? He felt a dread settling into his soul, and wondered if he had just become the rope in a tug-of-war between the two girls.

* * *

Shinji stood on the platform, crouched and quivering from the height. He was thirty feet in the air. Ten feet below him was the edge of a large pool, angled toward the water at a gradual thirty degree angle. Five feet below that was the first of several strategically arranged trampoline platforms, and below _that_…was the pool. It was a large pool, at least the length of a soccer field and the breadth of two. And all of it was for one game, and one game alone. And here he was, wondering how he had gotten to this point.

The day had passed in a blur. Rei was not at school, and he really wished she was. Every time he turned around, Asuka would be looking at him with a strange, sleepy expression. Many people, when caught in the act of staring at someone, would blush or try to turn away. She did not. She kept her gaze, head resting on her palm and the fingers of her free hand tapping out a staccato on the table. She made no effort to type on the laptop that day, and Shinji had suspected she was making an effort to try and break him before the match even began. It was succeeding.

And now here he was, at the Sport Center, about to begin a game that he was certain would get him killed. He looked at the shinai in his hand, and felt queasy again. He was not an athlete, and kosho seemed designed to mock his lack of physical ability. It was a mixture of martial arts, endurance training, balance, and on-the-fly physics that he couldn't begin to comprehend. The trampolines, for one thing, were not trampolines in the traditional sense. They were, in fact, a specialized rubber-like material, and highly tensile. You could walk on it, and be duped into thinking it was a solid, stable surface. But, apply a certain amount of force, and it could spring you twenty to forty feet into the air. He had watched the match before hand, as the two more accomplished practitioners had performed a litany of strange maneuvers. A favorite of theirs was an interesting stutter step that demonstrated the platform's strange properties. If standing in place, they would squat and push, giving themselves enough momentum to bounce up about four feet. Landing hard, they would contract their bodies, gathering momentum and pushing that mat as hard as they could. And then, boom: they were off.

As he watched the two fighters while waiting nervously with Asuka, he noted they could perform that maneuver on the fly, running along the platform, tripping, to give themselves that little bounce, followed by a dramatic pop through the air to the next platform. One of them had even perfected art of lingering, reaching the top of a parabola and simply floating for a few seconds before descending, to observe the field and his opponent, or to break a pursuit.

Shinji could do none of this. He didn't even know kendo, and here he was, about to perform this ridiculous show and probably die by drowning or a broken neck. He had watched the two finish their match, hoping they would play another one. It was not to be. They had left, and he and Asuka were now alone, and he was about to die. Of that, he was certain.

"Number 6," she called, from across the field. Even over here, she was loud. "Don't you dare hold back, you hear? I don't care whatever nancy-boy ideas you have about how men and women are! I'm out for blood; a man who holds back makes me sick." Standing there, in padded armor and holding a sword, she had transformed, becoming the embodiment of aggression.

He couldn't respond, still processing the drop. "All right, Number Six," she screamed, "I'm coming over!"

"Eh…wait, isn't…" Wasn't there supposed to be a signal?

Asuka stepped off perch and hit the first platform, and was now sailing through the air. She was wearing a protective mask, but even through the mesh, Shinji could see her eyes. He was pretty sure that's how an antelope saw a lion's eyes.

Acting on pure instinct, he hopped to the side and found himself falling. He wailed, landing hard sideways on the nearest platform, and bounced up some fifteen feet into the air. He looked over his shoulder to see the girl leaping from the platform, shinai held threateningly. For a moment, the world went still, and he took that time to decide that Number 2 had had it wrong. Rei was normal. Asuka was insane.

Desperate, he brought his feet under him, looking, looking, looking.

He hit the surface as he saw his next target, and leapt, traveling across the pool and hitting a second platform, then a third. He jumped again to the walkway, which was bordered by a padded handrail. He landed hard against the rail and turned.

Asuka was right on top of him.

She was screaming. He was screaming. The shinai was in the air. Shinji collapsed, hearing the stick slam into the railing above his head. Threatening to slide down the incline, he scooted backward, finding his feet.

Asuka was everything in this arena that Shinji was not. She was athletic, a genius in mathematics, and had tapped an aggression that very much looked like violent psychopathy. She was also a fierce combatant, skilled in martial arts that Shinji most assuredly did not know. She laid into him, swinging the bamboo sword with vigor. Cut, parry, thrust, repeat. The boy could only manage to keep retreating, his shinai in front of him like a shield and nothing more.

"You, stupid, blithering idiot!" Asuka screamed, slapping at the limply held sword. "What are you? Aren't boys supposed to be hot-blooded and aggressive? What a wimp! Are you mocking me? You have to be mocking me, because I don't know anybody who would be as intentionally sloppy and weak as you and find dignity in it!"

He caught his breath, as she glared at him. "I cannot see how you're 6 and I'm 7. You're like a frightened little kitten. You don't deserve that number." Something in what she said made him angry. It wasn't that crack about the number. He didn't care about possessing it, one way or the other. It was the fact that she continued to insist they be numbered. He thought back to their living arrangement. How Misato had wished him off with a "Have a good day, Number 6."

"Stop calling me that," he mumbled, suddenly using her as the personification of everything that was wrong. It was her fault, something childish told him. Everything that's going wrong? That's the cause. This girl. Here.

"What? Six? You actually don't like to be called Six? What's wrong with that?" She seemed confused, but pushed her confusion under the surface. She had found a weapon, and she decided to use it. "Well, come on, Six. Do something, Six. What are you waiting for, Si—"

He swung his shinai, striking at her with messy but strong blows. She backed up, blocking each but unable to counter from the heavy attacks. Finally, he stopped, angry but not moving.

They stood there, each with one hand on the railing, glaring at the other. "That was it?" she chided, leaning towards the pool. "That was the best you could ma—"

The boy's shinai slapped down on the railing. Asuka easily avoided it, pulling her hand to her…and found that all of her weight was pointed towards the pool. Pinwheeling her arms, she squeaked. Shinji advanced, but she pushed off towards a platform, landing on her hands and knees. She sprang into the air, landed, and baffled the back-spring with a curious double-crouch, canceling out the platform's push and allowing her stand evenly on it.

"_That_ was a dirty trick," she accused, pointing her sword at him.

"W-w…_what_?"

"It's clear to me now that you're going to fight this thing without anything remotely resembling honor, so be prepared for me to pound on you a bit before dunking you, _idiot_!"

"What is _wrong_ with you?" he raged, "Didn't you just say don't hold anything back?"

"There's a difference between not holding back and cheap shots!"

"That wasn't a cheap shot! You were standing there insulting me!"

"It was too a cheap shot! Not that you would notice. I don't know why I'm sitting here explaining this to you. Just shut up and come fight!" She took a guard stance.

"_You_ shut up. Come up here," Shinji insisted.

"Come on!"

"No, you come!"

"Number Six!" she raged, waving her arms over your head. "You're Number Six! Six, six, six!"

Shinji felt _that_ button get pushed one time too many, and he leapt, the shinai over his head in both hands. He landed, chopping down, but she had her guard up to deflect it. He bounced up in the air, and she took the opportunity to run along the platform, and stutter hop to one across the way. He landed, and sprang to follow her…

And regretted it. She had dug in at the angle, and was bouncing back along her original arc. Towards him. His anger cooled remarkably as she sailed closer, and he swung ineffectively. He was having trouble judging the speed and distance.

She had no such trouble. As she passed him, she cut hard with the shinai, knocking the wind out of him and killing his forward momentum, but spinning outward with the blow. If he had been an outside observer, he may have appreciated the grace with which she had performed the action, transferring enough force into the blow to stop him in dead air without sufficiently halting her own forward movement. It was not a negation of physics, but an eloquent understanding of them that allowed her to manipulate the situation most elegantly.

Shinji did not think any of that, of course. He was thinking about how his side hurt, how the world was rotating upside down, and that he saw the pool's surface below rushing up to meet him. There was a splash, then the dull roar of water in his ears and the sound of all above him. He struggled to right himself, hurt and winded by both the hard strike with the shinai and the long fall into the water. He discovered that landing in water from a great height was not gentle, nor pleasant, though the padded armor took the great brunt of the impact.

The combination of rage, shame, and pain did a great deal to dull the small thought burning at the back of his brain. "You know," a voice seemed to remind him, "You're an awful swimmer, and you're sinking to the bottom of the pool."

One thing at a time, he decided. It was actually a great help to hit the bottom, only ten feet down. Poor for diving, but no one in a kosho ring would hit the water in anything resembling a dive. The swimming lessons Misato had given him were not wasted as he calmly assessed his situation. His vision was fuzzy and his head hurt, but he could clearly see the struts of a nearby platform. He let go of the shinai, which bobbed to the surface, and pushed toward the nearest strut. His lungs were beginning to ache when he reached it. All of the platforms struts had protuberances that could be used as ladders, and he scrambled up it. In his rush to get to the surface, his ears popped, and the first sound he made upon catching his breath was a whine from the ache.

He sat there, catching his breath, as Asuka landed on the platform above him. "That was awesome!" she bubbled, giddy. "Let's play another round!" It was a complete departure from the crude and dangerous opponent he had seen before.

"You're not normal, you know that?" he snapped, feeling the adrenal tension in his limbs subside in the cool water.

"Oh, come on. This is combat. You have to be someone else when you're fighting, you know?" She bounced on the platform, performing a lazy back flip and landing on two feet. "Why do you think I spent all day sizing you up? It freaked you out, right?"

He coughed, and looked behind him. His shinai was floating about ten feet away. Gathering his breath, he pushed for it. His ability to swim was far from intermediate, and with the weight of the armor and the sword in his hand, getting to the next platform proved…interesting. He made it, however, and struggled up onto it as Asuka landed above him.

"You can't ever give your opponent a moment's rest when the contest begins," she said. "It could be boxing, or football, or even a guessing game. Victory isn't decided in the ability. It's written in the heart. You win by making the other guy blink. Easy."

"That's a great way to make friends," he mumbled, lying on the mat and dripping.

"What about friends?" she said, "You talk like that's the point to living. Friends come and friends go. Acquaintances is all anyone is. No one stays in our lives permanently. From one point to the next, we keep moving, picking up relationships and shucking them as we go. What would you rather have: friends, or a seat on the top?"

"But what's on top?" he choked. He leaned back onto his knees, and said, "What, this is all a contest? Define yourself by your number? Have you even stopped for a moment to figure out what's on top?" She gazed at him, her face unreadable behind the mask. Shinji was now angry, but not at her. He couldn't define the focus of his fury, but it had moved past Asuka. If anything, he felt pity for her.

"Have they told you what you get? Do you have some prize in mind? What's on top, really? What do _you _think is on top?"

She shrugged. "Everything," she replied, as if that was something he should know.

"That doesn't make sense, Asuka," he said, "Everything is all around us. What do you mean 'everything?'"

It was a question she didn't seem to have an answer for. She twirled the shinai thoughtfully, then tapped it on her foot. "Call me 7," she said, and kicked off the platform.

* * *

Shinji deposited the sopping equipment in a bin in the men's locker room. His arms hurt. His thighs hurt. His hands were bleeding again, through the gauze. He felt like there was a cup's worth of water in his sinuses. He stank of chlorine. And Asuka had insisted this become a regular thing.

At least she was happy, he thought sourly as he stepped into the shower. He had had it up to his eyeballs with water, but hot water was something he could compromise one. He used the shampoo dispenser liberally, feeling like his hair was caked with every possible chemical that a sanitary pool could possess. He had to work it into his scalp with his finger tips, and knew he would have to change the bandages when he got home.

As he was scrubbing, the shower next to him started. "That girl beat the crap out of you," the other occupant noted.

Shinji said nothing, his expression sour. "Yeah, well…I'm taller," he muttered weakly.

"Didn't look like it from where I stood," the man said "I'd say the two of you are about the same height." Shinji sputtered as water ran in his face, rinsing shampoo out of his hair and away from his eyes. He glared at the fellow who was speaking.

He was a tall and well-muscled man, with long hair. That seemed odd to Shinji, as he couldn't think of any man he had seen on the Island with long hair. "Why were you watching?" he grumbled.

"That's what I do, I watch. I watch things, and I listen," he said dismissively, scrubbing his face. "Sometimes I do it for myself, sometimes I do it for others. Today, Number 6, I did it for you."

Shinji felt a stammer start in his throat, but he stopped it. He closed his eyes. More games. He hit the shower handle, and kill the water flow. He would shower at home. He turned and walked to his locker, grabbing one of the folded community towels. He toweled off at the locker, pulling his bag out. As he did, the strange man reappeared. "What do you want?" Shinji snapped.

"My locker is above yours," the fellow said. Shinji grimaced, and stepped back. The man grabbed his duffel. "You have built a habit of distrust, and I find that a good thing," the man said, "Paranoia is a healthy activity around here, but I'm not here to make you jumpy. You need guidance, and I think I can provide that."

"I doubt that," he said, "I don't know you, and I don't care to." The man smiled.

"You should. For instance, I can help you beef up your kosho game, which it looks like might become a common occurrence for you."

"That's none of your business," Shinji muttered, trying get dressed in a hurry.

"I'm making it my business. In fact, I making all three of you my business," he said. Shinji glanced up, a warning bell in his mind. The man looked over, and shrugged. "You know. You, Asuka, and Rei. All three of you."

Shinji's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. A fear of this man built in his stomach. Was he from Number 2? Were his conversations with Rei being recorded all along? He felt like an idiot. Of course they were! Simply being comfortable with someone didn't mean you were impervious from conversation. Feeling of irritation and disgust welled up in his throat, and his expression turned feral.

The men blanched, and threw up his hands. "Hey, relax! No one knows we're talking. There was a no-field placed on the locker room as soon as you walked in."

"A…what? A no-field?" Shinji asked. The man nodded.

"Yeah. It was done to make it look like you were projecting it. No questions that way," he said with a smile.

"I…what…uh…who…"

The man grimaced, realizing he had just sent the boy on a tailspin. In the space of a few sentences, he had completely thrown the kid out the window. "Look," he said, "You want answers, and all you get is everyone's favorite excuse. That it would be telling, right?"

Shinji said nothing, but didn't disagree.

"What would you give to be told?" the man asked. "You want to know what's in the cards, and that's what I do. I read the cards. I work the system. I am here for other purposes, and it might be that my purpose is to your benefit. What do you say to that?"

Shinji said nothing to that, for a moment. His mouth popped closed, and he grimaced. "Okay," he said, taking the bait. "Who are you? Answer that."

The man nodded. "You want a name, and believe me I would like to give you one. Just call me the Janitor for now." Shinji shook his head, and looked like he was going to start screaming.

"I will give you a name," the man said, in a defusing tone, "In time, but for now I'm just the Janitor, okay? No one notices me, and I go around cleaning up other people's messes. That's what I do. Some of those messes are simple, and some of them are big, cosmic in scope. I am here to clean up the mess you've been pulled into. And I will answer all your questions, but this is not the time or place. Someone else can walk in, and then where would we be?"

Shinji felt a tremble pass through his hands. "How did you know—"

"Your names? I read lips." Shinji continued to stare at him. "Lunch, yesterday, you got stuck in that conversation about string theory—"

"You were watching us?"

"I have _been_ watching you, kid," he said, "Why would that irritate you? Is it because someone is daring to tell you, 'Hey, I've been spying on you?'"

Yes, actually. The boy was surprised to realize it was. He had made the tacit acknowledgment that privacy was gone from his life, and having someone so brazenly tell him that fact had angered him. He chewed on that thought. "What do you want?"

"To break the numbers a bit," the man explained. "I have a superior who wants to meet you, in time. You got his attention, with your number and your refusal to stick with it. That's impressive to him. And it's important, for him, and for you, that you keep refusing that number."

"Why?" Shinji asked.

"That's for him to say." The man had dressed as they spoke, and Shinji saw that a number 48 sat on his shirt. He reached into his bag, and pulled out a case. "If you want to know more, hold out your finger." Shinji blinked, and reluctanly did so. The man produced a red plastic box, and pressed it against the tip. There was a momentary sting that made Shinji yelp, and the man took a small vial and cotton ball. A bead of blood had formed on Shinji's fingertip, and the man pressed the vial against it. "It's amazing," 48, or the Janitor, or whoever he was, said, "What you can learn through the blood. Learn a lot of things, both ways." He pressed the cotton ball on the finger, putting the blood in the case and the case in the bag.

"Keep pressure on it, toss it on the way out. You'll hear from me in time, but just sit tight and stay shiny, you crazy diamond." He winked, and hurried out of the locker room.

Shinji sat on the bench in wonder, and was there until Asuka's voice could be heard at the entrance, screaming for him to hurry up.


	10. Chaos Defined

As Shinji slept, he dreamed of Rei. They were sitting on a bench, the ocean beneath them. They were wearing their school uniforms. "I do not like the girl called Asuka," she snapped. "I think that I hate her."

"This isn't a dream, is it?" Shinji asked, deflecting the question. "You…you are doing this."

She looked at him. "You are doing this as well. You have decided that we will be over the ocean. And the clothing. I do not know why you chose school uniforms."

"Why did we not have clothing last time?" he asked, suddenly uncomfortable. He had the option to ask that question, or the more pertinent one of how this contact was working, and had gone with his instincts on which to ask. She looked at him in confusion.

"Why does it matter? We spoke, and I met you."

It was, Shinji decided, utterly unfathomable to the girl that a person could be ashamed in a state of physical inadequacy or exposure. It made her sudden dislike of Asuka all the more jarring. "She is not special," Rei sniffed, continuing. "She is very loud, and should not eat a dinner that she was not invited to."

"Is this why you…invaded my brain? To tell me that you don't like Asuka?"

"I did not invade your brain. I was invited, and I came. You have more questions. I was simply taking the time to explain why I do not like the Asuka girl. I may go tell her myself, later."

"Don't bother her while she's sleeping," Shinji pleaded, watching a seagull drift by. "How are you…we…doing this?"

"Because we want to, and we are now able to. It would be easier to think of it that way, than to have it explained. You eat because you need to, but you can choose when and what to eat. You speak to me in the same way. We have simply expanded our means of discussion."

"And Asuka can…do this? Or can you go wherever you want?"

"I do not care what Asuka can and can not do," she mumbled. He wasn't going to get an answer that way, so he changed the topic.

"Tell me about chaos."

Rei folded her hands. "We understand math as defined by ten integers and the way they combine. Whether it is to create larger numbers or represent numbers that we cannot understand, they define our entire basis of understanding."

"And if we introduced a whole bunch of numbers, with different values, it would throw everything out of the window," Shinji said. It didn't take a genius to see that. He was experiencing it for himself, in fact. He had lived his life with a pattern that was understandable and measurable, and now here he was in Wonderland.

"It is more complicated than that," Rei said. "I will give you three rocks." She held open her hand, and there were three rocks. "How many rocks is that?"

"Three."

"Three physical rocks. If I gave you two more?"

"Five."

"Five. Now, what is the number between two of the rocks? If I broke a rock in half, you could represent it that way…with two rocks and a half of a rock. But that is not the actual number." She closed her hand and opened it, to reveal only two rocks. "There is a number," she tapped one, "and there is a number." She tapped a second. "What is between the numbers?"

Shinji stared at the space between the two rocks, concentrating. "I…I can't tell you," he said, laughing. "The idea is…"

"Strange? Difficult? Hard to follow?" she asked.

"Um, yes, all of the above." She touched his face, and he shuddered at the intimate gesture.

"What do you feel?" she asked.

"Um…I…" he fumbled for words.

Thankfully, she continued, giving him the answer. "You feel my hand. I feel your cheek. There is a physical stimulus to define what you see as I touch you, what you feel as I touch you, what you know as the logical criteria defining the sensation of me touching you." She withdrew her hand. "How do you know this?"

That part began to stir in Shinji. He felt a shudder, as it took hold, and he knew without knowing how. "I know this because the space in which I exist has taught me the criteria. My eyes see, my nerves feel, and my mind interprets."

"That is the dimensions to which we are defined. Secret integers are beyond what we perceive because we are not designed to perceive them." She turned towards the ocean, holding her hand open. A small cascade of rocks fell, splashing into the gentle waves below. "Our human understandings, our human minds, our flesh itself, limited to these four dimensions, find the notion of a secret integer laughable, not because it does not exist, but it does not exist in a way that we can comprehend it. No symbol can contain it, and no physical representation can represent it. It is, but we do not know how or why."

Shinji stared at her, and a creeping sensation came to him. "You do." She looked at him, something in her eyes he couldn't read. "You…you see these integers, or understand them."

"No," she said, "But they are the definition of why we exist."

"How do you know that? Why are you telling me this? Who told you that?"

"That would be telling," she mumbled.

"Then why tell me at all?" he asked, confused. He felt the bench fading, the ocean receding.

As she retreated, she said, "Because I was lonely."

* * *

Shinji woke up, and rolled to a sitting position in the bed. It was the first time in eight days he had spoken to Rei, albeit it in a non-traditional way. She was not at school anymore, and when he tried to go to her house, Rover would pounce and prod.

Life in the bungalow had become surreal, and he felt Misato was getting worn thin. She was attempting to balance Shinji and Misato with 7 and 58, keeping two faces for two children, and it was starting to affect her. Last night, Shinji had found her at the sink in the kitchen, staring out the window at nothing in particular as water poured. She had left for someplace far away, and when he touched her shoulder, she flinched, as if he had burned her. She smiled, patted his cheek, and disappeared in her room without turning off the sink.

Asuka, for her part, continued to be her abrasive self. She would snap at him when he said her name, insisting on being called Number 7. She was a fit of quirks that were difficult to follow. She could be sweet, bitter, punchy, relaxed, understanding, or satanic in the breath of a sentence, and he was getting worn down trying to understand her. In the very least, she seemed to have eased off her kosho obsession, satisfied she could trounce Shinji.

Still, the tension between the two of them was electric, and probably one of the reasons that Misato had begun to shut down. She could understand Shinji, but Asuka was an unknown variable, and Misato had suddenly encountered a situation that may or may not work against her.

She had been who she wanted in full knowledge that cameras watched her, because no one punished her. With this girl, who insisted on keeping to the rules…she never said she would bring trouble to Misato, but that wasn't the same as assurances. Misato didn't know Asuka, or what Asuka would do, or to whom Asuka would speak. So…she had become stuck. Asuka wasn't aware of it, but Shinji couldn't find a way to make her aware of it.

He heard her voice again, through the walls, and kicked out of bed, suddenly irritated. If she was talking, she was awake, and if she was awake, he could discuss Misato. He cared for the woman, and didn't like seeing her shut down like that. He crept through the hall, and reached Asuka's door. He almost knocked, when he heard a second voice. Did…Asuka have someone in her room? He stopped, a sudden sense of voyeurism catching hold.

"…are doing so well. I'm so very proud of you," the voice said. It sounded like an older woman's, but underneath, the…quality of a girl's voice remained.

"I think about you every day," a second voice said, much younger.

"Do you keep up with your school lessons?"

"When they're interesting. They're boring, and weird, and don't make sense."

"But you do them, right?"

"Always."

"That's good. That's how you will succeed." Shinji felt his lip curl, when he realized that both voices were, with variation, Asuka's own. She was having a conversation with herself, in two voices. Anxiety crept into his mind, the crawling sense of otherness piercing his brain. Gently, he opened the door, and slipped into the room, staring.

"I want to be the best, mommy," she said in the little girl voice.

"You will be. The best there is, and then some," the older voice said.

"And then we'll be together again, right?" the little girl asked.

"Of course. That's what you want, so that's what you'll get," Mommy said.

She was turned towards the door, so he saw her lips moving as she spoke. It was a curious sensation, to watch as she spoke in two voices clearly not her own while obviously asleep. He tried to understand what he saw, and in trying to understand…he drifted. He broke. He reassembled. That Part took hold. It was always coming and always going. It was distinct enough that Shinji thought of it as something separate, but it was him, so much of him that he couldn't separate it. It was like an evolved and reasoning instinct. An Uber-Id.

He crept to the bed, and reached out with a hand. He laid the fingertips on her head.

The world pulsed.

* * *

"What is the top?" Shinji asked. Asuka spoke, asleep but awake.

"Where I get what I want," Asuka's reply came.

"What is it that you want?" Shinji replied.

"To not be alone." That was odd. She was so disdainful of people, so why fear loneliness?

"What is alone?" Shinji asked.

"Without her."

"Without who?"

"Mother." The word sparked a curious set of images in Shinji's mind. He saw Misato. He smelled his mother. He saw her arms. He felt her breath. He didn't see her face. Why could he not see her face? Who is Mother? What is Mother?

"Who will give you your Mother?" he asked.

"She will come when I am the best," she asked, stirring in her sleep.

"The best what?"

"The best…the best…better…of…" She was drifting, fitful. Her dreams were starting to scatter and disorganize, and turn dark.

"The best what?"

"I…don't know." A tear collected and flowed from her eye, still closed. "I don't understand…the question…my head hurts." Shinji withdrew his hand, and she relaxed. She said nothing else, and her breathing became regular. Shinji turned, left, closed the door…

And collapsed on the floor, trembling. He felt his jaw lock, and his back arc. He felt that Part recede, and his fit soon passed. His tense body relaxed, and he sagged on the carpet. He stood on trembling legs, and began to make his way towards the his bedroom. Something pushed him past the door, and he continued, down the hall, towards Misato's room. He stopped at the door, and leaned against the wall. His mind reeled.

In his brief contact with Asuka, he had gained an understanding of her that had stunned and confused him, and he was uncertain of what to do. When he touched her, he didn't see a strong and confident girl. He saw something…flayed. Torn. He saw something that hadn't tried to dominate the world.

He saw a girl that had been trapped and fought back. It scared him, for some reason. Not only that he saw it, but how he saw it. It was clear to him that there was more to that Part than simply perceiving difficult things, or understanding what Rei was telling him. He was becoming something Other. He touched the door, needing comfort. Misato was the only one he knew who could do that.

Opening the door, he looked into the room. Misato was nowhere to be found. Her bed was empty. Concerned, he entered the room, looking around. He saw the closet door, and saw a piece of blanket under it. He walked to the door, and opened it.

Misato was on the floor of the closet, wrapped in her blanket. As the door opened, her head snapped up, and she seemed caught in shock and fear. He stared at her, and huddled a little tighter in the blanket. "Um…Shinji…" she asked, awkward that he was in her room and had found her like this. "Shinji, do you need something."

He was silent for a moment. "You are Misato," he said quietly.

"What?"

He crouched, and smiled at her. "You are not 58. You are Misato." He left, returning to his own bed. She remained on the closet floor for a long time, a feeling of ease growing in her heart at the frank and honest declaration. As for Shinji, he fell asleep in a much better mood.

* * *

Should Shinji and Asuka have been tested at that moment in time, they would have been found to have a matching 75% of their locks removed. That would determined at a later date, naturally. In the meantime, technicians scrambled to find out why the bungalow had vanished from the surveillance grid.


	11. Lecture Hall

**Note from Gob Hobblin**: I forgot to mention this, but the concept of secret integers is not my own, though I did indulge on the concept for purposes of the story. Please check out the very recent short film 'The Secret Number,' concerning a scientist trying to prove a number that exists between 3 and 4 called 'bleem.' Awesome film: I am dead certain some mathematician or physicist is going to see that film and say, "Well, that's quaint…" while scribbling surreptitiously in a notebook.

* * *

It was called a deputation, though the intent was skewed more towards inquisition.

There was the conscious part of Geno Ikari's mind that was amused, but he would be a fool to admit that he wasn't somewhat hesitant about the meeting. He could be called upon by the Seven at any given time, but it always made him nervous when they did. He was certain he knew the layout of their maneuvering, except in these moments when they addressed him directly. Then, it became less clear what he did and did not know. Subtle reminders that his multiple chess games could be diluted and confused. The wrong queen moved against the wrong knight on the wrong square, on the wrong board. It was always fine in the end, of course. Gendo was rarely wrong.

As he entered the Council Room, that thought stuck with him. He was, truly, right the vast majority of the time. The problem with being right so often was, that on the rare occasions when you _were _wrong, the results of that error could be catastrophic. He banished that thought from his mind as he entered the steel gray room, and a semi-circle of seven pillars topped with black domes rose from the floor without preamble.

The seven pillars regarded him with their electronic eyes. He stood still in the center of them, and said nothing. It wasn't his place to begin.

"We have observed the results," the First said, "Concerning the Island's work output. The community has served well in creating the machinery and operational apparatus necessary to achieve an optimal result."

"We are also pleased with the progress indicated in Numbers 6, 7, and 100," the Fourth said. "It is clear that the environmental restraints placed upon them have focused their energies towards breaking the seals and preparing the next stage."

"Thank you," Gendo said. There was nothing else to say.

"However…" the First added, and Gendo mentally sighed. Ah. Here it comes. "We have concerns regarding the inability to maintain positive surveillance of the Children."

"That was to be expected, and it has been difficult to find workarounds," Gendo admitted. "Their abilities are removing them further from the traditional space we occupy, and placing them more at an in-between. As a result, electronic surveillance is…fluid."

"There is always more traditional means of observation," the Seventh intoned.

"Which would muddy the results of the experiment," Gendo said. "They are already being affected by the presence of the Observer." He gave a vague gesture, indicating himself, the Island. All of it, really. Even the unconscious knowledge of being observed was enough to affect the direction of any experimentation subject. He continued: "Any more interference, and we could see a negative feedback on our results."

"And their individuality?" the First asked.

"They _are_ children," Gendo said defensively, "Holding onto their core concepts of self is more valuable to them at this stage, just as it is more easily defused. The question is finding the right lever to force the contradiction in our favor. Number 7 has shown progress in her assimilation, and Number 100 has always been ideal in her behaviors."

"Number 6?" the Second asked.

"Irrelevant," Gendo admitted. "Even when it became clear to us that he could serve a purpose in the experiments, it was always assumed that he would find little ways to rebel. I am less concerned about his results than I am about the affect he will have on Number 100." It was a lie, but there was enough truth in that statement that it sounded convincing.

"And what is that affect?" the Fifth asked.

"In order to continue breaking the locks," Gendo explained, "There is, unfortunately, a certain grain of individuality which must be encouraged. The presence of Number 6 has caused a gradual but measurable rise in Number 100's performance, both because of his rebellious tendencies and unique qualities. She gives him a puzzle to examine, and, according to our observations of her behavior and personality profile, she will further lock into her own convictions regarding our experiment."

That much was true, as well. He had carefully designed 100's social upbringing regimen and nudged her psychological development in ways minute and intrinsic. He had a ninety percent surety as to what she would do in any given situation. He would have preferred a ninety-nine percent rate, but all observations they _could_ conduct had indicated that 100 was still on track towards her purpose.

"And Number 7?" the Sixth asked.

"The element of competition," Gendo said, "Both in competing with Number 100 in terms of ability, and competing for the attention of Number 6. That competition will start to push our results to the next stage."

"That is a risk," the Second hissed. "We could lose seventy years worth of effort in this."

"Progress is the child of risk," Gendo said, "And in order to achieve an optimal and stable environment, to create the conditions necessary for our goals, we _have_ to risk. Sometimes, in order to proceed forward, we must backtrack."

There was a thoughtful silence, and the First said, "We trust you to continue yielding results, though we insist you are aware of our hesitations. This deputation is concluded."

The pillars receded into the floor, save for the First. Gendo stood, waiting, when the voice of the First intoned, "Gendo Ikari, I feel you need a reminder in the purpose of this experiment."

"Why is that?"

"To keep your eye on the greater problem," the First said, "Humanity has come close to its self-destruction too many times for the math to favor its continued existence. The probability of a regression, or, worse, an extinction, rise each day. Each hour."

"Yes," Gendo agreed, feeling a squirming in his stomach. He already knew this. Why the lecture?

"We must subvert the multi-individual inclinations of the human psyche into the subjugated and clear mass individual. The One Human Soul," the First said. "The survival of our species rests on this next fundamental evolution."

"Of course," Gendo agreed.

There was a long silence. "Our goals must be clear on this one issue," the First said. "I know I can trust you to ensure that humanity survives into the future. That we achieve our next evolution. To grow from lesser beings, to a True Cosmic Being."

Something in the flatness of the statement rang a bell in Gendo's head, a distant warning. He couldn't be sure of its nature, but recognized the pressing _need_ to be wary. "That's what I have worked for all along," Gendo said, "The goal of my wife, the purpose of my family's existence. All for that conclusion."

The eye seemed to squint at him. Impossible, of course, but something about that black void seemed too lifelike for comfort. "Remember that," the First said flatly, and the pillar sank into the floor.


	12. Fibonacci People

Shinji continued his minor rebellions in class, this time stringing together elaborate stories or anecdotes in his answers to the nonsensical questions. As usual, he was not punished for these minor infractions, but the ever present grumble of Rover whenever he left the school reminded him that there were consequences if he pushed the boundaries too hard. His irritation with Rover had begun to compound into a truly hateful disdain, and he saw Rover less as a threat and more as a malevolent fence. It was always there, and always watching. There was nothing to push it away.

Rei had been gone for two weeks.

Asuka had jumped into her place as quickly and greedily as a starved weasel in a chicken coop. In a way, it was appalling how much she demanded of Shinji's time, his attention, all of it now that Rei was not there to share it. It would be disgusting, if Shinji did not know the true reason of why it was happening. That brief moment of _touch_ a week ago had given Shinji an insight into the girl that she did not realize he possessed, and one that made him feel an unbearable pity for her. That was the rule of the moment, it seemed, for the women of Shinji's life. Pity for Misato, caught between moments of freedom and fear. Pity for Rei, lonely, alone, and unloved. Pity for Asuka, angry and aggressive yet afraid of isolation. Isolation, that was the word. Little prisons for each person, built by forces outside and forces within. Diabolical and efficient. It was impressive how one could stop questioning their circumstances when faced with the fear of isolation.

Well…some people. Shinji continued to question, albeit in silence and in mind. And certain aspects of those relationships had changed. He determined to be patient with Asuka, and that patience seemed to be paying off. She was no less aggressive…but she was less mean. She seemed to feel she had established herself as the Alpha of the relationship, and as long as she thought that, all the better. As for Misato, the simple words Shinji had said to her seemed to have brought the old spark back. She was cheerful, blunt, and in charge in the bungalow. For a few days, Asuka seemed appalled at the flagrant way that her two house-mates would eschew numbers in private. Any attempts to correct them on this error were met with the firm and icy resolve of Misato, who possessed a longer experience in getting her way than Asuka did. In the end, Asuka seemed to console herself by rabidly sticking to her own number at every opportunity, and accepting that, while she didn't run the house, she could at least run _Shinji_.

"…and I think a soup would be nice tonight," she was saying, walking home with him from school. "Something with lentils…and carrots. I'm sure you know an appropriate recipe, Number 6."

"It sounds like you have something specific in mind," he replied, kicking a loose rock in the direction of the bouncing white sphere shadowing their movement twenty paces to the left. It growled threateningly, but did nothing more. "Why don't _you_ cook dinner tonight?"

"I beg your pardon?" she said, an elaborate mask of shock crossing her face. "It is clear that there are certain roles in our household. Seeing as you jumped into the role of cook, you should continue that role." It was clearly an order, but one carefully crafted as logic and reason. She had not forgotten that, as Shinji was number 6 and she was Number 7, he was technically _her_ superior.

"No harm in trying new things," he said quietly, toeing that line very carefully. "I'm curious to see what talent you have with cooking."

"Just because I am capable of doing basic, menial necessities does not mean I am best suited for them," she grumbled. Inwardly, he smiled. It would be very easy to pull the 'I'm 6, and you're 7' card and force her to accept the role she was so clearly sold to. That would tacitly admit acceptance of his own number, though, and something that he had continued to refuse. Thus, as carefully as she was trying to order him to do things, he had to as carefully work his way out of them without accepting his so-called authority.

"Cooking is hardly menial," he said, "The combining of ingredients, and the work in preparing them, is as much art as it is work. It's science, even…it's basically chemistry. Alchemy for the stomach." He smiled at her as she gazed back, befuddled. His vocabulary, and his terms of phrase, had changed slightly in the last month. He spoke with more confidence, and chose words and sentence structure both more complex and more playful than when she had first met him. Part of that was due to the constant verbal jousting the two of them partook in, but part of it was…something more fundamental that was hidden from both of them.

The strange thing was, it didn't seem un-Shinji, so to speak. Despite being a different mode and means of talking, it still seemed to be…him. Expanding and focusing at the same time.

"Alchemy for the stomach. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, Number 6," she muttered. "Still, I find your description of it as chemistry…amusing. And not entirely inaccurate."

"I'll make a deal with you," Shinji replied, "I will make the main course, if you do a soup. Whatever it was you had in mind, with the carrots and lentils."

"What would the main course be?" Asuka asked, skeptically. Shinji searched his mind, thinking of what they had eaten in the last month or so. Asuka was the largest influence on their menu, so they had been eating heavily European-centric meals. They had eaten roast chicken last night.

"Tilapia," he announced. There were plenty of fillets in the freezer.

"That's a bland meal," she sniffed.

"Only if you don't know how to cook it," he declared, turning off the sidewalk towards their bungalow. Asuka still looked skeptical, pushing in front of him as the front door opened. He almost followed her through when he felt a prickle, like a needle piercing the skin of his neck. The muscles in his shoulders tightened, and he found breathing difficult. He slowed, and turned.

At the end of the road, there was a figure standing very still. At this distance, it was difficult to make out any distinct features, beyond the general shape. It was clearly a man, and he seemed to be wearing a top hat and fancy suit. It seemed odd attire, considering how warm it was right now.

It was too far to tell, but Shinji had the distinct impression that the figure was staring at him. That in itself was not so strange, as much as he would hate to admit it. The Village was rife with individuals whose sole function was to watch others, and Shinji had had plenty of people stare at him. In his more malicious moments, he would stare straight back, to see which ones would avert their eyes and which would challenge his gaze.

This did not feel like that, however. Something about the figure seemed…off. Inside out. He didn't know how long he had stood there until Asuka snapped, "Do you want to get heatstroke, Number 6? Come inside." He glanced towards the door, the spell broken, and looked back. It had been barely a fraction of a second, but in the time he had looked away, the figure had vanished.

* * *

Dinner was good, but halfway through, Asuka began muttering about colors. "Red is not blue," she slurred towards her plate, her fork limp in her hand.

"Excuse me?" Misato asked around a mouthful of food. Asuka's jaw went slack a moment, and she seemed to tip forward in her chair. She made a hissing sound, and tightened.

"Head," she whimpered. "Head." Shinji sat very still, confused by the performance but feeling concern as well. He also felt a vague twinge in the depths of his brain, as though something was tightening, like…a screw in a socket.

"Asuka?" Misato dropped her utensils on the plate and circled the table to lean over the girl. She had managed to get her hands to her face, and was rubbing her forehead methodically and deliberately. "Asuka, what's wrong?" Misato continued. "Is it your head? Do you have a headache?" Asuka made a tremendous effort to force out some sounds that were vaguely like words, but were not. Misato helped her up, and guided Asuka towards her bedroom. The slender girl swayed like a reed in a windstorm, her only guidance coming from Misato's gentle direction.

When Misato returned, she said, "I'm going to call the Infirmary, and see if they can get someone out here. Can you clean up in here, Shinji?"

"Sure," he said, "Do you need me to watch her?"

"I can do that, but thanks," Misato replied. She made a call through the kitchen's telephone, and as Shinji rinsed the dishes, he listened to Misato's rising voice and growing temper. It was clear that whoever was on the other line was not being cooperative. "The girl is in tremendous pain!" Misato snapped. "What more do you need for someone to come take a look? Blood? Open wounds?"

Shinji figured that the conversation was going to take a while, and he slipped back to Asuka's bedroom. If Misato was stuck on the phone, no one was watching the girl, and seeing her twist up like that…it seemed wrong that no one was sitting with her. Shinji peaked around the door frame, and saw her curled up on the bed with her back to the door, her hands on her head. She was trembling as if she had a fever.

He stepped into the room and leaned over the bed, placing a hand on the crown of her head. "Asuka?" he asked. She made some small sounds, confused and lost. Her skull felt like a hot iron under his palm.

"A—" he began, and the walls seemed to slide down and out, gaining a form like liquid, and then smoke, twisting out of focus.

"—su—" The ceiling seemed to drift away, floating outward like a piece of paper caught in an errant breeze.

"—ka." He stood in a field of white sand under a purple sky. He was not alone: in front of him, Asuka was crouched on the balls of her feet, a thin and perfectly straight stick in her hand. She was carefully and purposefully drawing lines in the sand, working outward to form a spiral.

"You're new," she muttered, not looking up.

"I'm sorry?" Shinji asked, confused.

"Stop apologizing," Asuka snapped. "I hate it when people apologize. It's always 'sorry this,' and 'sorry that.' Sorry we didn't listen. Sorry we didn't know. Sorry sorry sorry sorry…" She began muttering the word like a curse, cutting her stick into the sand in a widening circular motion.

It was in this moment that Shinji decided he had slipped into that 'place' where dreams happened, the place where Rei had met him so many times. Now, he was here with Asuka. If it was a dream, that meant there were rules here, rules of etiquette not quite like the rules of the real world. The boundaries were different. In this place, he was more of the Other that had been forming in his mind, the One that came out when the world made less sense. The One that had allowed him to see Asuka on that night.

"Fine, I'm not sorry," Shinji said, following the logic of the dream. Things, he found, had different consequences in dreams. "I'm happy to be here. I didn't understand your statement."

She stopped and straightened, staring at him. "Are you an idiot?" she asked, "Soft in the head? What do you mean you didn't understand my statement? Hurry up, you're wasting my time."

"What did you mean by saying that I'm new?"

"I feel like we've had this conversation before. Have we had this conversation before?" It struck Shinji that Asuka had no idea who he was. Whether his face was obscured to her or different, he couldn't tell, but she looked upon him with no recognition.

"No, we haven't. I wish we did," he said. He was feeling flirtatious, shielded in the safety net of the dream world. She sneered at him, and resumed drawing her lines.

"What is this?" he asked.

"What do you know about the Fibonacci series?" Asuka asked, continuing to drag the stick.

"I don't. What is it?" Shinji asked.

"I have nothing. 0. And then I add a 1. What do you get?"

"A 1, I suppose."

"That's right. Then I add one more. And that's?"

"2."

"2 plus 1 is 3, right?"

"Yes."

"3 plus 2 is 5."

He began to follow the pattern, and to where she was leading. "5 plus 3 is 8, plus 5 is 13, plus 8 is 21, and so on. Continuing to add the previous value to the new value," he stated. She looked up, pleased that he was following.

"Imagine the world as a grid. One and one are next to each other, paired to 2 is four square. That's six squares. Six paired to 3 squared, and so on. Look." Asuka no longer dragged her stick, but pointed, and a golden line spiraled from the source, outward and onward. "The Golden Spiral," she said. Circling out like a great nautilus shell, the spiral surrounded them, floating into the air. Shinji watched in awe as it formed a cone, the apex tied to the dirt where Asuka had been doodling. He crouched over the spot, thinking on this. Silly words came into his head, and he gave them voice.

"Jack and Jane met in the lane, and then they were a couple. Then they met Jill, and drank their fill, and watch how their cheerfulness doubled."

Asuka fixed him with a scrutinizing eye. "What was _that_? A nursery rhyme?"

"No," Shinji said, "I just made it up on the spot."

"It was _awful_. Please don't do it again," she begged.

He was already moving on, however, finding himself strangely excited by the spiral. "Think about that," he said, rocking on his heels and staring at the narrowing spiral, delicate like a shell. "You have nothing, and then you have something, a single integer. And then a second comes along. Those two 1's become a two, and one more and it's a three. It's so simple…" He turned to her. "Is the Fibonacci series infinite?"

Asuka thought about it, then laughed. "You know what? I don't know. I never asked. I always assumed that it must go on and on, at least until the numbers run out."

"But you're adding. How can the numbers go out?" Shinji asked with a smile.

"Ah…numbers are funny things," she said with a smile. "They do what they will, most of the time."

"I'm starting to learn that," Shinji admitted. "I used to think numbers were so reliable."

"Nothing is reliable," Asuka hissed, "The best you can count on is yourself, and even that will break in time."

"You say that like you believe it," he said quietly. She said nothing, but continued to stare at him. "Does your head hurt?" Shinji asked.

"A little," she admitted. "It feels like it's far away. Maybe it'll hurt worse if I think about it."

"Try not to," he said, "There is something about the Fibonacci sequence that appeals to you. What is it?" She looked uncomfortable when he asked, her gaze dropping. He waited for an answer, and when none came, he ventured a theory. "Perhaps it is because that solitary number grows and grows? It starts out lonely, and then it's not _so_ lonely." She turned her eyes back to him, and found a friendly smile waiting for her. No judgment, no mockery. It was an honest and kind expression.

"Are you…sure I don't know you?" she asked, curious.

"I'm sure we'll meet again," he said, "You'll know me then."

"Hmm. That's a weird thing to say," she said. She giggled, something Shinji had never seen her do before and was shocked when she did. "But I like the way you say it." The sand became as liquid, and the two of them began to sink slowly into it. There was no fear, for the sensation was warm, inviting. Shinji stared at Asuka, smiling now, as the ground closed up over him and the world became dark. He could hear his breathing, and felt that his eyes were closed. He opened them, to find he was standing in Asuka's bedroom. She was still curled on the bed, and his hand was still on her head. She was asleep now, and no longer trembling.

Misato was still shouting on the phone. He didn't know how long he had stood there, but it couldn't have been for very long. It had felt like an eternity, though.

Shaking his head slowly, he turned to leave, to tell Misato not to worry, that the episode had passed. And further…to try and process this new way of communication he possessed with Rei, and apparently Asuka as well. Things were moving rapidly, and he was unsure of the direction they went.


	13. Scrape The Walls

Gendo gazed at the back of his driver's head, then down to the screen in the seat in front of him. The image of two workers was displayed there: Number 991 was a jolly looking, slightly overweight man, and his coworker 821 was a thin, dour looking fellow. They were groundskeepers, and the subject of his little constitutional. Apparently, one of them had gone around the bender or something, and Number 2 had requested his presence. The fact that Number 2 was out here looking at it concerned Gendo, slightly. This was well below their pay grade, so to speak.

The car was right now in one of the park districts of the Village, a fairly isolated one at that. They rounded a corner, and came upon two vehicles. One was a ubiquitous utility vehicle with the NERV logo on it, and the other was Number 2's ground vehicle, with the man himself standing next to it. Gendo noted the conspicuous lack of armed Security personnel.

"I wonder why this isn't being dealt with by Security," Gendo asked without preamble, stepping out of the car. Number 2 made a sour face, and stood up from his perch. He jerked his chin towards the entrance to a small path cut through the roadside shrubbery.

"This constitutes one of the…special kind of situations that need something a bit more direct," Number 2 said, scraping the dirt with his toe. Gendo stared at him, then down the dirt path.

"It came to you…now you're giving it to me," he said, unemotionally. Number 2 shrugged.

"I've seen what's happening down there. I can tell you, but I want you to see it for yourself. This is something of concern, I would think." Gendo shrugged, and stepped off the road and between the shrubs. It was thick foliage, and not but a second in did he no longer have sight of the road.

He came upon Number 991 a little ways down the path, standing very still. He seemed to be talking to someone, but no one was present. Gendo cleared his throat, deliberately announcing his presence.

The man turned towards Gendo, smiling unnaturally wide. It looked as though he had inserted wires into his mouth, to even further split the grin. On the ground, at his feet, was…what was left of Number 821. Yes…he did need to see this.

"He's happy now," Number 991 explained, nudging the remnants with his foot.

"Rover," Gendo said quietly, and the sphere appeared with a roar, bouncing next to its master. The giggling lunatic seemed oblivious to the new arrival.

"You don't look happy," he whispered, "You should be happy. Don't you know how to be happy?" Gendo stared impassively as the man began to advance, step by step, towards him. In one of his hands was a set of wire-cutters, and in the other was a hammer. There was no doubt in Gendo's mind what that man intended to do with the tools.

"I'll _teach_ you to be happy!" 991 announced. "I'll teach you! I'll teach it into your flesh! Into your cells! You'll _be…so…happy_!" He actually started crying as he said it. Fat, greasy tears slid out of his eyes and down his cheeks, mingling with drool and blood on his chin. He lurched more quickly towards Gendo.

That was quite enough.

"Restrain," Gendo said, and Rover leapt up into the air like a ping-pong ball before descending down upon the man and pressing him against the earth. He clawed and scraped at the dirt, screaming. Not in fear or anger, Gendo realized, but pure ecstatic joy.

"Joy to the world! Joy! Joy everywhere! I'll bring joy. I'm the only one who knows how! It's all down to me! Ask him! Ask my good friend back there!" He seemed to calm for a moment, a strange lucid state overtaking him. "He doesn't…seem so angry now, right? So scared? It was so easy…to show him how…" He had heard enough.

"Dispose," Gendo ordered, and Rover quivered.

Rover was a thing of many abilities, many shapes. It helped when one never knew what was coming…heat or flame, cruel or quick, the very act of unknowing was what made Rover such an effective watch dog. Slowly, like a melting ball of sugar, Rover poured over the shape of the man, still screaming ecstatically about how happy the world would be if everyone just let him show them how. The screams devolved into muffled pleas, until Rover reconstituted it's spherical shape. A single, grasping hand, the only evidence of his victim, clawed at the ground, before slipping into the white mass of Rover. The sounds stopped. Once again, Rover seemed a mere weather balloon, hopping in place.

"And the rest," Gendo said, turning away.

* * *

Number 2 stood next to the ground car as Gendo walked back up the trail. "I'm impressed," Gendo said, "That he was able to avoid our observation apparatus in order to commit this crime." Rover made slithering noises from the bush, cleaning up all traces that Number 991 had ever done anything untoward to _anyone_.

"Makes one wonder how much control we have," Number 2 said, a pointed hint. That wasn't at _all_ the reason he wanted Gendo to take a look at the violent act, but his superior had deliberately brought up that line of thought, and dutifully Number 2 followed it. If they wanted to discuss the deeper implications, they would do so later, when Gendo decided to.

"I don't care about how much we can or cannot watch the Children," he was saying, "In fact, the less we can observe them, the better: it indicates that their abilities are advancing at pace. No, we have other methods of control for that." He pointed back into the bushes. "_This_ is unacceptable. We all have our roles to play, and I won't have anyone else pollute the conditions simply because they can't handle the pressure."

"We tighten the screws, then?" Number 2 asked. Gendo considered it, then shook his head.

"No," he finally admitted. "No, we already have everyone observed to the last detail. Re-assess our psychological algorithms, though. Make sure we don't have another one of…those."

"Because that's all this was…one bad apple through the cracks," Number 2 mused. Gendo gave him an ugly look, and Number 2 quickly switched topics. "What will we say about their disappearance?" he asked. He knew the default answer, but he wasn't sure if Gendo had other designs on this incident he would care to spin.

"How did you find out about this?" Gendo asked.

"They failed to report in, and couldn't find them on video feeds. Had them on tracker, though. They saw 821 and 991 standing right next to each other where you found them. They radioed 821, as he was the shift supervisor, and got 991. He told them everything was too good to be true, and said no more," Number 2 explained. "Maybe…five people know about it. No one knows what actually happened except you, me, and Rover…of course." Gendo nodded, considering that.

"There was no Number 991," Gendo finally decided. "There was no Number 821." The default answer, then. Here today, gone tomorrow. Those who worked with and knew them would, in time, believe it themselves. It was a better alternative to what might have happened, and kept them from thinking of what would happen if they pushed the question too hard. Fences of the self-built kind tended to be the strongest.

"Of course there wasn't," Number 2 finally said, with a smirk, "Why would there have been?"


	14. Seen And Heard

Asuka felt too sick to go to school the next day, communicating only in monotone grunts, sighs, and (in Shinji's case) hisses. He left the bungalow, threw a rock at Rover (eliciting a dull and throaty growl), and checked back towards Rei's home. He looked towards the school, then back to the home. As if anticipating his idea, the white ball drifted slowly over. He threw another rock, then started to walk towards the school.

The day was the same grind…logic puzzles. Stupid logic puzzles. He opted for answering each one with a letter of the alphabet, going in order and filling each answer queue with as many letters as would be allowed. Long streams of AAAAAAAAAAAAA and BBBBBBBBBBB and so forth. The day came, the day went, and he sluggishly dragged his feet to leave when school ended. He hid in the bathroom for a bit, running his hands through the hot water in the sink, and thinking about his interactions with Asuka in the Other Place, wondering what was driving her under all that. The conversations, the loneliness. It lashed at him. He shook his head, and left, allowing the sink to run.

As he was exiting the building, he felt as though someone was walking next to him. He turned, and saw Number 48, known as the Janitor, sidling up next to him.

"You," he mumbled, surprised.

"I," the Janitor replied, smirking. He had that 48 still on his chest. "Been awhile since we've seen each other, right? How's kosho?"

"Painful," Shinji mumbled.

"I expect," the Janitor said, that smirk seemingly frozen on his lips. "You still want those lessons?" Shinji shrugged, but didn't say no. The man tossed something to him, and Shinji caught it. It was a small, rubbery capsule, almost like a pill. It's color was amber, and it felt warm in his hand.

"What is this?" Shinji asked.

"Memories," the man said, "Distilled experience. Crafted and tailored to your specific blood type. A gift to you from the Free Man."

"The Free Man?" Shinji squinted his eyes at that.

"Yeah…the only free man on the island," the Janitor said bluntly. "He crafted that for you. Something to help you push at the fences a bit more." He gave him a wink. "And something to up your game. Show Little Miss Seven something new. It's a token. A sign of things to come."

Shinji stood silent for a moment. "What do I do, just swallow it?" he asked, giving 48 a skeptical look.

"Put it in your mouth, and bite down to break the membrane."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"And then…" Shinji asked, "What happens next?"

"That would be telling," 48 said through a toothy smile. Did he know any other expression than that goofy grin? "Be seeing you," he called, and walked away whistling a tune. Shinji felt his teeth ache, and froze listening to the song the man whistled.

It was 'Them Bones.'

* * *

Shinji practically ran home, feeling the crawling sensation of eyes. Eyes everywhere, eyes on him, scurrying like insects and worms. He rushed through the door of the bungalow, which was obediently open and awaiting him, and hurried through the house. He didn't see Misato, and Asuka was probably still clammed up in her room. He rushed into his bedroom, closing the door behind him and peeling off his clothing frantically. He hurried into the bathroom, turned on the hot water in the shower, and shut down.

For a long time, Shinji simply stood under the stream, letting it drown his skin, his hearing, his sensation of the here, now, why, when, and whatever. He tried to sort his thoughts, meditating in the steam.

The Free Man…the one free man on the whole island? It sounded like a trap, to be honest. A false exit, meant to compel him along a predetermined course. A person dying of thirst would drink the sand if they thought it would help, and an exit would have the same affect on the trapped. The Free Man…

And yet…

That song…when Number whistled 'Them Bones.' How did he know? The images of the court room spiraled to the surface. The insane Judge, the mocking Young Man, the giddy hysterics of the Jury…the blond man. The blond man. The blond man.

You are Number 6.

Was it more than a dream? Was someone communicating with him? Was the Janitor simply cluing him in? A sign of trust? Or a warning?

It was compelling..and confusing. Too confusing.

He was still pondering this when he stepped out of the shower and practically ran into Rei in her school uniform. He blinked, but to his credit didn't cry out.

"I have been gone," she said humorlessly, "I have just gotten back."

"I…can see that," he whispered. He stood very still, as if rapid movement might make the situation more preposterous. "Um…why are you in here?" His voice cracked.

"Are you embarrassed?" she asked, tilting her head at his tone. "You should not be embarrassed. I have already seen everything, and you have already seen everything."

That pushed a button, and he maneuvered her towards the door and propelled her into the bedroom. "We are going to have a discussion about boundaries as soon as I get dressed!" he snapped, slamming the door behind him. He toweled off, and just finished drying his hair when the door opened again.

"What do you mean by boundaries?" Rei asked, and Shinji wedged the door back closed with his foot.

"Well, for one thing, not lurking outside my shower when I'm in there," he called back, and glanced around for clothes. He had his pajamas in here, folded in one of the drawers next to the sink. Well, it wasn't quite early evening yet, but one might as well get settled for the night, right?

After dressing, he stepped into his bedroom, fitting Rei with a quizzical stare. "How long were you standing in there, anyway?"

"From the moment I arrived to the moment you made me leave," Rei said. Ah. Of course. How silly of him.

"Okay…boundaries. As in, you know…knocking before coming in, not walking in on people who aren't dressed…" he tried.

"You were in the shower, and would not have heard me knocking," she replied, "And as I have already established, we are already aware of what each other looks like without clothing. Skin is skin. Is it because you are shy? I do not understand why you would be shy."

"No, I'm not shy, I…" He trailed off, trying to find a way to explain _modesty_ to someone who clearly had no concerns with the term. He shook his head. "Where have you _been_?"

Before she could answer, his bedroom door opened. Asuka walked in, grumbling, "Shinji, Misato wants you to tell me what I missed tod-"

She skidded to a halt, catching sight of Shinji in his pajamas, and Rei in her school uniform. In his room, together. Alone. "Why is she in your bedroom?" Asuka asked, an icy tone beneath her words.

"It is not unique for me to be in his bedroom," Rei snapped. "I am in his bedroom frequently. Are you not in his bedroom frequently?" There was an edge to that question, as if to imply that Asuka was not important enough be here. The other implications of the sentence seemed to go right past Rei, however. They did _not_ go past Asuka.

Shinj should have felt a flush of pure horror, but he simply didn't care anymore. Really, there was nothing in the world he could think of that could fix the damage from what had been said. So, as Asuka's face turned red and her mouth opened for what could only be more scathing commentary, he dove in and hijacked the conversation.

"You know what's awesome?" he asked, "Hot chocolate. Hot chocolate is the best, isn't it? Let's all go have some hot chocolate in the kitchen. And not here. In my room."

Still glaring at each other, the two girls exited the room, Shinji close on their heels. In the kitchen, the girls sat in silence while he heated water and filled three cups with cocoa powder. When he was finished, and sitting at the table, he sipped at his cocoa while the girls continued to make a point of ignoring each other.

"So, Rei," Shinji asked, "Where have you been all this time?"

"I do not feel like discussing it with certain parties present," Rei said demurely.

Shinji sighed, exasperated, and said, "Somebody called the Janitor gave me something today." Might as well throw it out there for _someone else_ to ponder. His brain hurt being the only one to process these conspiracies. Besides, no one seemed to want to talk about anything, and he certainly didn't want both girls here simply to simmer angrily at each other.

"The Janitor?" Asuka asked. "What, that's like his name? What was his Number?"

"He had a 48…but I don't think he's part of the Village," Shinji said quietly. Rei cocked her head to the side.

"Please tell us in detail," she requested.

So he told them about the Janitor. About the strange meetings, the secretive nature. The talk of a 'no-field.' He showe them the capsule, and that was that. They sat and studied each other, in deep thought.

"What specifically did he say it was?" Rei finally asked.

Shinji rolled the pill on the table, looking at it. "He said it was…a token. Sort of a sign of…things to come."

Rei picked it up and scrutinized it as a jeweler would examine a diamond, turning it in her fingers. "Was that all? There was nothing more specific as to what this liquid is?"

"He said it would help with kosho," he said, and smirked at Asuka. She crinkled her nose at him in exasperation.

"Perhaps it is a steroid, or some other sort of athletic enhancer?" Rei continued, oblivious to the exchange of expressions.

"I don't think so," Shinji said, shaking his head. "He implied it was…well, he called it a tutor. That sounds like information exchange."

"Curious," Rei said quietly,

Asuka made a loud and exasperated noise, which earned her a look of surprise from Shinji and a more withering glare from Rei. "_Obviously_ he's a drug dealer," she said, "And he's giving you your first fix for free. Then you'll be hooked, and you'll pay whatever price…"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Shinji broke in, "This place has plenty of problems, but I haven't heard anything about a thriving drug trade. Granted, they don't tell us much about what's going on, but doesn't that indicate how much harder it would be to _have_ a drug trade? Who could have the privacy to run an operation like that?"

"She has a point, however," Rei said begrudgingly, "This individual who calls himself the Janitor does not appear to be constrained by the normal _boundaries_ that we ourselves are limited by." Asuka and Shinji studied Rei curiously. There was a special emphasis on the word 'boundaries,' though her expression and general tone had remained characteristically bland.

"Don't try and be cute," Shinji said, waggling a finger at her, and Asuka huffed, feeling like she had missed something _yet again_. That was always the curse of a trio…at least one person would always risk being on the fringe. Shinji detected the irritation, and he directed his question to her. "Can you think of anything else it might be?"

"What if…it's poisonous?" Asuka then ventured, and Rei cocked an eyebrow in thought. That was a possibility. "I mean, we're doing important things here. We could easily be targets for…foreign governments…I think…" She trailed off, finding herself surprisingly at a loss for who would be targeting them. All of this had to be for some sort of security, against someone opposed to them. But who was opposed to them?

Why had she never questioned that before?

"_Are_ we doing important things here?" Shinji finally asked quietly.

"Of course we are. Aren't we?" Her reflection was momentarily broken, and she looked back and forth between them. Shinji looked skeptical, and Rei revealed nothing. "Aren't we?" Asuka insisted again, but neither of them had an answer for her.

"So…what do we do?" Shinji asked.

"Take it," Rei said. Asuka blanched at her, and, admittedly, Shinji was surprised as well.

"What's your reasoning?" he asked.

"I do not believe it is a poison, because there would be simpler ways to eliminate you than such a convoluted plan of tricking you into killing yourself. If he is able to hide his presence, then what would have prevented him from killing you at any time earlier?

"As for the hypothesis concerning drugs, I find that patently ludicrous." Asuka gave Rei an evil look, and Rei pointedly ignored her. "I think it far more likely that it is as he said it was. Some sort of tool to help you in your sporting endeavors.

"And, frankly…I am curious. I wish to see what it is first hand, and I think that, given what he said…you are the only one this pull will work for."

"No, this is a very _bad_ idea. We need to tell this to…someone. Misa…" she swallowed. "Number 58…or Number 2." Asuka's retreat to numbers unsettled Shinji, and at the mention of Number 2's name, a sudden well of anger rose up in him.

"We don't tell anyone _anything_," he said, a bite to his voice that made Rei flinch. Asuka looked back and forth between them, a pleading look in his eyes.

"We…have to tell…" she said desperately, and a suddenly very ugly part of Shinji's self took over. He felt himself leaning over the table as if from a great height, actually _saw himself_ sitting at the table. An expression took hold of his face that frankly scared him.

"If you tell anyone," he said in a voice as flat as , "I will never speak to you again. Rei will never speak to you again. I will make sure that no one on this Island so much as looks at you ever again. You will not exist to us. Do you understand?"

Asuka quailed under the words. Her face turned white, and her fingers trembled on the table. Her expression was one of terror, and she tried, tried very hard to form more words. In the end, she surrendered, and looked down at the table, nodding.

Rei glimpsed over at Shinji, seemingly impressed. Shinji felt ill, and returned to himself, his eyes blinking in surprise and disgust with himself. Asuka looked broken, and he hated himself for going for that weak spot. But…he _didn't_ go for her weakness. He had _watched_ himself do that…but he didn't _want_ to.

What was happening?

He opened his mouth to apologize, but it would be meaningless. The damage had been done, and a selfish part of him knew that Asuka had been broken. She wouldn't tell anyone now, and that was precisely what he wanted. He glanced at Rei, then back at Asuka. He closed his eyes, and picked up the pill.

He placed the capsule on his tongue, and closed his mouth. He broke the rubbery surface with his eye teeth. Liquid flooded his mouth and dissolved almost instantly. Shinji's eyes then rolled up into his head, and he collapsed on the floor in a senseless heap.


End file.
